Why do we have so many confusing identities and why should I remember them?
To be honest, you don't need to remember them unless they're relevant to you or those in your life. The only real reason to remember large quantities of them is to help people in their journeys and to help people feel not alone.
Labels, and especially micro-labels, aren't there for you. They're there for us. They're to help us communicate to ourselves that we're not broken, and to communicate to others that we're not just making it up from nowhere (not that you would be any less valid for doing so).
I'm trans because I'm not some broken confused man, I'm a woman, but also because my experience differs from cis women.
I'm gray-sexual, because I'm not defective, it's not some "performance issue". It's genuinely less interest and significantly less need. (Part of the asexual spectrum, it means significantly less sexual attraction or significantly less intense attraction, but not none. Not to be confused with libido which is the need for sexual release.)
I'm polyamorous, because I'm not non-committal or "want permission to cheat", but because I see relationships as ours to define, be it with a single partner or many. I can commit to one and I can commit to many, it's all about the agreements I have with the people I'm in relationships with.
As someone taking the opposite path from the below image:
I navigated it most of my life by constantly and obsessively managing my threat presence. It felt like a constant battle with the toxicity of other men. I had my guard up not because there was some threat of women assaulting me, but because watching their guard go up around me felt like being stabbed in the gut, like a lifeline getting cut off.
It took trauma and ego death for me to really start building an actual community for myself. I had bits and pieces I had gathered carefully and with great effort, but all that toxicity kept me from knowing what to do with it.
Now, even later, transition has been a massive weight lifted. (For those in the closet or eggs cracking: people clocking you doesn't make much difference here, if they put up that anti-creep guard around you they're a bitch anyways)
I feel like I can breathe. Connection is so much more casually there. I can see it in people's eyes, I can be in a crowd of strangers and I feel drastically less alone.
Unfortunately, those years of malnourished pain don't just disappear. I still have all of those threat management patterns, I feel like I'm scarred and sometimes even bleeding from that. There's a caution in me, afraid that people will misinterpret, that this wonderful person I want to make friends with will abruptly shut down on me and then disappear from my life if I relax too much, if I'm too open... I still feel like I'm emotionally walking on tip toes...
#lgbt #lgbtqia #trans #transmasc #transman #transfemme #transfem #transwoman #toxicMasculinity #Patriarchy
Stepped out of the shower today and had a moment appreciating myself, most of all appreciating that I actually like my hair now.
I'm not conventionally attractive, but I don't think of myself as ugly any more.
It hurt... it hurt so much and like so much trauma it's not that obvious until the trauma is past...
I was isolated, not only from other people, but from my own emotions... I wanted so badly to cry but I couldn't, all I could do was bottle it up (not toxic masculinity, literally an effect of testosterone)...
I looked at myself and pretty much didn't see myself... I had no self-image then and now I have one forming.
Before even my transition I figured out I'm grey-ace, now that I have a girlfriend I've really established that I'm grey-ace, emphasis on the grey... 😳
So it's really nothing sexual for me... there's the opposite of gratification there (without details... certain things don't work right anymore...). What it is is feeling at home in my skin, looking at myself in the mirror and finding things I like... sure I get dysphoria and there are plenty of things I don't like about my body... but there's for once in my life alot of things I do like.
And on top of it all... my personality and interactions with the world feel so less discordant... so many of my behaviors were early hints of being a woman... I may never have kids, but it's clear I've had "mother" energy for a looooong time.
... I could keep going but I got a day job to do...
#lgbt #transfemme #lgbtqia #lgbtq #transition
Date night tonight with my girlfriend, what do y'all think? #TransEuphoria
(Sorry no image description, if someone else writes one I'll copy it, but I'm useless at describing myself)
I shared this a few years ago but a lot has changed since then...
Not a perfect graph regardless, but I like it for communicating.
My sister Chelsie is struggling emotionally with potty training her kid, so I edited a popular meme to be more relevant.
Oh wait, already did... maybe I need to make it more prevalent?
(Edited as based on a reply it was far too easily misread. Previously said "Admin is a Jew" and it never dawned on me that someone could think it meant the admin of the zionist server rather than myself)
Had a really long night at a charity LARP event I was invited to, I thought I felt slightly pretty for a moment in the last one picture I shared... But after last night I felt much much more happy and sure of myself.
Edit: alt-text provided by @Janet Logan 🏳️⚧️
Call for help for emergency vet bills, thankfully my fur-nibling is safe now but my sibling Dandelion is under a lot of strain from this.
Hey friends: my dog got into something he shouldn't and I've been left with a $700 emergency vet bill. Doggo is okay now, thankfully, but I could use some assistance if anyone has anything to give. Venmo: @ronanjoem
#EmergencyAid #VetBills #Pets #Dogs
Got my anti-cistamines today! One order of tit-tacs and one order of antiboyotics!
#hrt #trans #transfemme
30 Days of US Healthcare: DIR Fees
youtube.com/watch?v=I61wCVh0Y1…
Day 23 of 30 Days of US Healthcare youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpM…
Saw this and decided to share my commentary on it because it's extremely harmful:
Unfortunately nothing here is valid. They've solved the finger problem and it's pretty much only old models that show up there. People are bad at even as well (let alone the fact that real faces are asymmetrical). Purposeless or lack of intent is also common in human art (there are whole art styles around it). And lack of perspective often is because the real art it's emulating lacks perspective.
And those AI detection pages are very very inaccurate. They can't remotely tell you if it's actual AI work, just if they think there's a chance of it being AI work.
All of this, including the detection sites are causing problems for real people who get accused of their very real artwork being AI. People get shut out of communities and told that they need to entirely change their personal style if they want to be accepted because it's too "AI like".
And finally the comment about it taking an incredible amount of resources: it actually takes remarkably little. You can run these AI systems on a single desktop computer with a low to mid range graphics card. (One of the problems for these AI companies and one of the reasons they're so widespread is because it's so easy and cheap to run it yourself)
Note: I don't have the energy for an image description, if you reply with one I'll edit this post to include it.
Got me a site icon now, taken with permission from my sibling's art!
I should nab a bunch of their artwork to share here, especially since they offer prints.
Original:
Piece: Sad Girl (modified)
Artist: Devin Bailem (they/them)
