🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️Happy Trans Visibility Day!!! 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
It's kinda funny how when some people see a person with it/it's pronouns they said that it's pronouns are "dehumanizing" but it's dehumanizing to THEM, It's that other person's pronouns not yours, if it's comfortable of using it/it's pronouns they let it be who it are! It may be dehumanizing to YOU but not to IT.
My dudes
Don’t think of the strike as “wah i’m not getting my shows”.
Think of it as “If they don’t - I’LL NEVER GET ANY SHOWS AGAIN”.
Because, you know, they won’t be there to write them. Because they can’t eat nothing. They can’t write if they have no laptops. Or houses. Or electricity. Or paper. Or pens. Which all funnily enough cost money.
Pay them what they’re worth - or they can’t afford to keep working.
And then no one gets what they want.
jokes aside, i think when we talk about having healthy relationships with food and eating mindfully we forget that for many people, intuitive eating isn't, well, intuitive. especially if you are recovering from severely disordered eating patterns and/or a severely disordered relationship with food, figuring out when you are hungry, full, wanting, finished, and more in regards to food feels impossible. so for those in recovery: it's okay that intuitive eating is hard. it takes practice and time, and it has to be learned. be gentle with yourself. a healthy relationship with food is possible, it just takes time.
disabled people have talked already about how inappropriate it is to touch or grab their mobility aids. but less often i think do people know how to act if they were asked to hold, retrieve, or touch someone's aid (such as crutches or canes as these are the aids i have used and am familiar with)
being friends, family, or partners with a disabled person doesn't grant permission to touch their aids at any time. furthermore having permission to touch an aid - to hold it, pick it up, or retrieve it etc - doesn't give permission to touch or play with them as you please. while keeping in mind that different people's boundaries will vary, here are some things not to do with someone mobility aid:
don't fiddle, stim, or play with it
don't wave it or swing them around
don't hold it by the handle the owner uses to utilize it
do not use the device
do not "test it out"
do not lean your weight on it
[in the case of crutches] do not use them to hop or otherwise take your feet off the ground for fun
try not to drop them or make them unclean
do not adjust any settings
do not use them as a weapon or play-weapon
do not walk immediately behind the air user/out of sight
try not to flip them upside down
what you should do instead:
return the aid immediately when asked. no delays because you were not done with them
hold the aid(s) upright, out of the way from other people by the main body
ask before touching or negotiate times when it is okay to grab without asking (such as if they have been dropped or are falling)
give the aid user increased space and distance to use them safely
try to make sure you aren't forcing an aid user to walk on a sloped path (such as on the pavement/sidewalk)
most importantly, don't take someone's boundaries around their mobility device personally, regardless of how close you two are. disabled people deserve autonomy over the things that support and supplement their body functions just as much as their own body.
Is it just me or are the new tumblr users convinced there's a penalty of some kind for using this site like it's meant to be used?
i’ve noticed lately that i’m not really a person to other queer and trans people anymore. ever since i started openly identifying as a trans man, people have been much less likely to consider my experiences as serious or worth talking about, less likely to give me any sort of benefit of the doubt when discussing queer issues or gender, and much less likely to care if something they’ve said was hurtful to me. i've watched as people went from viewing me as a complex human being with deep thoughts and feelings and a complicated and traumatic past whose voice was worthy of hearing, to just Man.
and i really want to get across how serious this is, bc i know a lot of you will read this and just go “ugh another man complaining” and i would ask if you’d react this way to a trans person who wasn’t a man, but i know you wouldn’t. because i identified as trans nonbinary for years and wasn’t treated this way. people took my experiences with misogyny, fatphobia, transphobia, etc. seriously, didn't try to claim i hadn't experienced it or that it wasn't as bad as i was making it out to be. it was specifically when i started to use the label 'man', not when i went on testosterone or came out in my real life or had any sort of large meaningful change in my life or who i was. it was literally in response to the word i used to describe myself. that one word was all it took for the queer and trans community to decide i was no longer worthy of being treated like a person. and of course, this shift was happening when the rest of society was also deciding that because i was more visibly queer i wasn't deserving of humanity anymore to them either. it was an absolute mindfuck to be experiencing a significant increase in queerphobia and transphobia in my real life while simultaneously having the queer and trans communities deny that that was happening and start to dehumanize me.
and i really wish this was an online only thing, but it's not. there has not been a single trans event or rally or protest i've gone to in the last year where issues that primarily affect transmasculine people have been directly spoken about. it's rare to even hear the words 'trans men' at these events. at a rally i went to last week, one of the speakers said that "all the signs that say 'protect trans kids' should say 'protect trans girls'" meanwhile out of the approximately 10 trans trans people chosen to speak, only two of them were trans men. numerous mutual aid resources for queer people explicitly exclude trans men. when speaking to the parent of a trans boy the other day, they had absolutely no idea that trans men could be denied coverage for gynecological care if their gender marker is an "m", which their child's is. this erasure and dehumanization of trans men, even within the queer and trans community, doesn't just 'hurt men's feelings lmao', it puts us in danger.
so yeah. it's really bizarre to go from the world denying my trauma and experiences because i'm just a stupid deranged woman, to the queer and trans community denying my trauma and experiences because i'm just a whiny entitled man. because in neither situation am i treated like a human being in need of compassion. i'm just a blank slate for whatever gender stereotype people need to project onto me.
rules of engagement:
-do not tag this with "q slur" -do not insinuate that i'm making any sort of statement about trans women/femmes. i'm literally just talking about me and my experiences. we're not on a goddamn oppression seesaw. -ra/df/em lite rhetoric gets an immediate block. i'm tired of dealing with ur bootlicking asses.
Trans Missourians on HRT, call your doctor as soon as possible and get a 90-day supply or as much as they’ll give you.
Lots of us are going to have to relocate or go through costly and/or illegal channels to acquire HRT now.
I invite trans people in MO to add their payment links this post. We desperately need support. We need people to give a shit right now. This is life-or-death for many of us.
Here’s mine:
Venmo: @smkzq3
Ko-fi: falseparasol
I recently colorized this c. 1910 photo of Magnus Hirschfeld's 4th, 6th, and 7th patients. They were three of the first trans men to receive medical care/legal support in Germany. I can't help but appreciate their dapper sense of fashion.