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@yourselfcola
i've been working on it for awhile but i think the little circle of community petz sites i've been working on is ready for being advertised publicly so here is the main directory
we have a forum, a discord, and a bazaar instance going right now and some future plans for other things
(as always if you are newly interested in playing petz you can also get installers here!)
just overheard a mum in the museum ask her seven-year-old child ‘shall we say bye-bye to the skull?’
me: im disabled and have limits
the smartest most intelligent guy in the world with the most hugest dick ever like so big, like the biggest dick ever, man and also soooo intelligent and thoughtful and just so so intelligent: have you tried pushing yourself?
from my own experience and also from what i hear from others, the issue seems to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how i know my limits. i know because i have discovered and tested them. i push them sometimes, carefully. and occasionally i get ok results or at least nothing bad happens. but sometimes something does happen, so i MUST respect my limits.
but when i talk about disability to abled people, they assume its just a bad attitude. like ive defaulted to a "i cant" attitude. and that stems from a fundamental mistrust of disabled people, and the cultural grift of acting like bad things can only exist in the mind. yes i know this is old news. anyways.
your twenties are not "late" to start hrt. that is a normal time to start hrt. your thirties are also a normal time to start hrt. your seventies are pretty late to start hrt, but not too late. like, statistically, that's at the end of the curve. but if you are not dead, it is not too late for hrt.
Tears For Fears - “Head Over Heels”
Transfeminism's Need for Reform
As I read into transmisogyny theory, I feel a frustration at the repeated behavior to place a comparison between transfeminine experiences as contrasted to a transmasculine one, done to point out the uniqueness and severity of transmisogyny- yet unnecessarily and regularly undermining the experiences of transmasculinity in how those comparisons are handled and addressed.
Comparisons that will make definitive sounding statements about the transmasculine or masc GNC experience, yet neither quote nor collaborate with any transmasculine voices. Nor do they offer any insight to transmasculine experience beyond these comparisons, and end up presenting a very generalized and simplistic perspective of it, contrasted to the more robust elaboration of transmisogyny the text is centered on.
While there's use to compare trans experiences to elaborate on differences (and similarities), there is serious issue in this uneven portrayal. It is an issue to encounter major transfeminist texts only offering simplistic generalizations on transmasculine experience, their inclusion centered more on how useful it works as comparison to support the analysis on transmisogyny, than treated with respect for the far more complicated concepts they actually are.
Anecdotes and footnotes made up of partial or skewed perspectives and conclusions, rather than actual, real lives with a lot more nuance than these takes give them.
It's an effect of transmasculine erasure, and the erasure of gender nonconforming masculinity in society, and in feminism. I don't feel it is often ill intentioned, that the authors seek to actively dismiss us, but they clearly show a lack of familiarity and an irresponsibility with handling the subject. Our lack of voice becomes filled in with extrapolations of cis male or female experiences, or transfem experiences played in reverse. Our absence so accepted that we are not sought out to fill it.
I do think these authors, at the least, hold unconscious bias, as many people do. That bias is left unconfronted by this lack of transmasculine input and analysis, and this bias feeds the lack of desire to seek it out. A bias which foundationally treats us as having less important lives, less hardship, and less important things to say.
As I traverse these texts I cannot help but really begin to understand just how much this influences the impulse within transfeminist spaces and the trans community at large to devalue transmasculine experiences with their oppression. How this pattern was born from our erasure and now further feeds and justifies it.
I cannot ignore the complicated situation it creates for us, as important of content these texts contain and how universally recommended they are. How difficult that makes it when we raise our voices to criticize these elements. When passive devaluing and refusal to engage with the complexity of transmasculine experience becomes a casual element of analyzing transmisogyny through means of unbalanced comparison, then the disagreement with this kind of behavior and its conclusions can quickly be interpreted as downplaying the severity of transmisogyny.
Compound that with a hypervigilance from the trauma of transmisogyny, the negative stereotypes and attitudes about male entitlement or anti-feminism projected onto trans men, the normalized dismissal of our voices and our treatment as self-centered and attention seeking from misogyny, the attitude it is unimportant to listen and center us that these important texts contribute to, a very simplified understanding on man/masc=easy and woman/fem=hard (ideas left unchallenged because of a lack of transmasculine and masc gnc voices), and the general strain of anti-transmasculine prejudice within society and our communities which has not been properly analyzed or addressed, and therefore no one is expected to be held accountable for.
Then you create this toxic storm of the discourse we find ourselves within today.
One where transmasculine people are trying to formulate theory and discussed lived experiences through a transfeminist framework which lacks content addressing them, in argument with transfeminists (both tfem and tmasc alike) who have more robust library of theory to reference regarding transmisogyny, but theory which contains major blindspots and flaws which cannot be fixed or addressed without transmasculine input. Theory which normalizes an attitude that proclaims that input is unimportant.
I cannot emphasize that this is exactly why transmasculine analysis is needed in the field and in our discussions of transfeminism. While I am doing my research try to create a more disciplined analysis I continue to find many holes in our discussions of transfeminism, much of it I feel is carried over from cisfeminism. I find these texts very informative and agree they are important, but can be very flawed in its approach to us, and sometimes outright unwelcoming.
Having a measured approach of accepting its positives while voicing legitimate criticisms is necessary if we wish to improve our discussions and future theories. Outright dismissal of these works get us nowhere, neither is obfuscating the issues these works have and placing them upon an untouchable pedestal.
I don't mean to throw away these works or these authors by pointing out my criticisms of how they handle addressing transmasculine experience and how normalized it is to only address the transmasculine experience to say "you don't have to handle this."
Because even when that statement is true, it can be incredibly incomplete, because it fails to include how these concepts instead manifest differently. All it says is "you do not have to handle this" and moves on, without acknowledging, or seemingly understanding, what we actually do have to handle, that we do experience these concepts effecting our oppression in ways that are important and harmful.
The repeated assumption and implication that what we experience is more simple and less severe is a failure of these authors and a disservice to us and the trans community. We should expect better, and it is possible to voice that criticism while still valuing other aspects of their work.
Their work would be better without this, it does not require centering us to avoid actively or passively delegitimizing our struggles. It only takes giving us the consideration we need and deserve. If you do not wish to make the effort to listen to us, then do make the decision to speak about us.
I find it deeply disheartening just how frequently I encounter this approach over encountering our collaboration. That speaks for itself.
Feminism is an ever evolving branch of theories, which requires looking at itself critically to progress into better and more inclusive forms. Transfeminism is an important branch/evolution of feminism itself, and we should learn from its past contributions and continue to build upon its many positives, while being critical and understanding its failures- and bridging those gaps to make it more whole.
Just as feminism as a whole always must grow, so too must we demand transfeminism to evolve. We all will benefit from a more inclusive reform.
Also, transfeminism needs to account for and listen to nonbinary people even when we don't identify as transmasculine or transfeminine.
The problem with these texts in how they handle transmasculine and trans men's experiences is also relevant to how they treat nonbinary who are not transmasculine or transfeminine.
Either dismissive and ignorant, or outright hostile and *racist in particular*, spreading white supremacist myths about how the white western sexgender binary is the only "natural" system of organization.
Transfemninism will never be progressive if you only expand it to include transmasculine people and trans men as well as transfeminine people and trans women, but continue leaving out nonbinary people who do not identify as either.
It's treated as "annoying" and "divisive" for nonbinary people like me to say this, which is the problem in and of itself.
I do not agree with veganism as a moral standard. If it is your personal moral stance, that is fine. If you think humans eating meat is inherently immoral, I don’t want to deal with you, you’re hopeless. Vegan ideology behaves more like a sect of evangelical Christianity than a dietary choice.
Veganism is better for the environment, but claiming that it's a morally superior choice ignores cultural and economic factors that make people eat animal products.
It is not inherently better for the environment. That is the thing. When you begin trying to explain that local, sustainably sourced animal protein is better for the environment than imported plant proteins that are farmed 3,500 miles away using slave labor, they start tuning you out. Down is better for the environment than polyester stuffing, leather is better for the environment than pleather. We should work on making animal agricultural practices more sustainable instead of trying to shame everyone into eating plant products that are also farmed unethically and unsustainably.
Ants pot by Bradley Macom, 2023
@yourselfcola
the french beatles
jean, paul, george, et ringeaux
People who insist tumblr must be 90% LGBT because their self-curated dash is have never gotten a weird comment on a post and went to check the person's blog and discovered an entire deep subculture of christian and tradwife users reblogging anti-abortion quotes and transphobia between each other. I promise you they're on here.
this is just what it's like being on a platform that doesn't necessarily push inflammatory people and things toward you on purpose
funny orange that ol rascal
auto immune disorders happen when the immune system ignores regulatory factors and begins attacking healthy bodily tissues, due to what scientists refer to as "sheer love of the game"
yeah sure you're not ableist... but are you cool with visible medical devices?
are you gonna be weird about feeding tubes? are you gonna ask invasive questions about catheters and ostomy bags? can you cope with seeing someone give themselves an injection? could you walk up to someone with a tracheostomy and talk to them? how about someone with a central line?
does your disability acceptance extend to people with visible medical devices?
please don't harass this person but lots of responses like this, lots like this specifically about the injection part. and here's what i have to say about it:
being squeamish is not the same as having a medical need. being uncomfortable is not the same as having a medical need. and furthermore, being uncomfortable or squeamish is not the same as having a phobia.
in the nicest way possible... if other people's medical needs make you squeamish or uncomfortable, that's something that you need to learn to cope with. this post is asking you to do one thing: be normal to people with medical devices/needs. and yeah if you can't be normal to someone with a medical device that makes you a little uncomfortable, that is something that you need to work on.
and the way to do that, as some other people have pointed out under this post, is exposure. the solution to being squeamish or uncomfortable around medical devices is not to avoid people with medical devices/needs or treat them differently, it's actually to be exposed to them more.
and that's not always easy, some medical devices are not common to see in public, but like... do some research? google is cool? look at some pictures? wikipedia is awesome? there are large communities of people with these medical devices educating about them on various social media platforms?
phobias are different. phobias are a type of anxiety disorder. they're not uncommon, but they are generally considered to be highly treatable! if you have a genuine phobia of needles or some other medical device, that's a different situation than being squeamish or uncomfortable. but it's still a situation that needs to be managed without mistreating other people with those medical devices.
it's okay to feel uncomfortable without it being a phobia. uncomfortable is not a life threatening experience. delaying a medically necessary injection could be. when i said can you cope with seeing an injection, that was intentional phrasing. you can be uncomfortable, but can you cope with that discomfort?
we're not asking you to do anything ridiculous. just be normal about medical devices. be normal when you meet people with medical devices. we're sick of being treated like we're contagious!!
(disclaimer: some of this might not be phrased well. i've been trying to formulate this post for hours, and have been thinking about it for days. i'm tired of myself and my disabled friends with visible medical devices/needs being treated this way.)
I think a lot of this 'religion is necessarily oppressive' stuff honestly is kind of like the confusion about ppl thinking that like, slavery and scientific racism and etc came about BECAUSE OF beliefs that Black people etc were not fully human rather than those beliefs -- those ARGUMENTS, really -- being JUSTIFICATIONS that were invented to allow white ppl to continue to engage in slavery which was at its core about economic exploitation. Like that most systemic bigotry serves a Useful Purpose to those in power and that's why it exists; the policies aren't put in place because of the beliefs. The cart isn't pulling the horse. Christian stuff was used to justify the same things that later, "scientific progress" was used to justify in the west (e.g. scientific racism, eugenics, etc. Very very very much rooted in the idea of certain beliefs and cultures as inherently more rational and forward thinking because BEING RATIONAL AND VALUING SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS WERE CULTURAL VALUES AT THE TIME.) (This does not say anything about Science. It says things about Institutes and power and oppression.)
Similarly, you see a lot of people saying "well religion is used to justify oppression by the people in power" and its like yes. Religion is not unique. Beliefs about what is true about the world -- ideology -- can always be used to do this and frequently is.
When there are common beliefs held by a majority of people in a given culture those beliefs will be used by the people in power to explain and justify the things they do to maintain power and control in society.
This isn't a function of religion. It's a function of power.
When people say "well, this religious rhetoric is/was used to justify misogynistic legal standards in this society" the answer is yep. And if it wasn't that it would be something else because that society had an investment in that specific kind of oppression of women. We have seen this morph into 'rational' 'scientific' explanations for women's inferiority and justifications for making women second class citizens once the cultural values swing more towards rationality and science, as well. Thats... regular.
Like... love to have a good faith convo about this with someone who doesn't get weird and reactionary about "Religious People" but sure not seeing much of that going on. Weirdly.
Anyway.
#i think this can be a tough pill to swallow bc it necessarily involves#accepting that your secular ideology and philosophy can be exploited just as easily for violence and harm#as religious ideology can#because thats humans babey#fascinating also to me is the phenomenon of people believing that bc they do not subscribe to any beliefs that they see as#''religious'' or ''spiritual'' they are immune to magical thinking of any sort.#i promise you that is not true in the slightest.#and also the things that we each identify as SILLY AND OBVIOUSLY UNTRUE FAIRY TALE SHIT is... culturally determined hee hee#im sorry to tell u that no one is objective about reality. thats rough buddy!
the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.
