I'm so fortunate I was able to get my uterus removed, and it took so many years for any gynecologist to be willing to even have a serious conversation about it let alone refer me to a surgeon where I could discuss my options.
before I was allowed to pursue surgery, I had to prove that I had tried "less extreme" options, which in my case was an injection of a very strong hormonal birth control that led to me bleeding for three months straight (which I experienced as a constant waking nightmare of dysphoria) and, if I had remained on it for over a couple years (if it had "worked" for me as a solution) would have started to erode my bone density and was therefore not recommended for long-term use.
I know surgery is seen as the most 'extreme' option, but to be fucking honest, I don't understand why dissolving your bones is seen as the 'less extreme' option, when hysterectomies are extremely safe and routine procedures.
and previous to being able to meet with an actual surgeon, I had so many doctors tell me, "Oh, you wouldn't want a hysterectomy because then you'd go into early menopause and your bone density would begin to decrease earlier in your life" which is wild because
as I learned from an actual surgeon, you can just leave ovaries in & remove the rest, so you don't enter hormonal menopause. like it's that easy to avoid it. it's not an additional complication. a subtotal hysterectomy that leaves ovaries so as to not trigger early menopause is completely normal and common.
the "less extreme" option offered would have decreased my bone density more rapidly anyway
I'm so grateful and thankful to be on the other side of the surgery, but I still feel frustrated that there is so much fearmongering from gynecologists themselves about hysterectomies for patients who desperately need and want them. It's seen as a complete last resort, but I genuinely do not believe it should be seen that way in all cases.
If someone genuinely expresses continuous desire for a surgery, whether that be for alleviation of debilitating symptoms, or dysphoria, or both (which was my case), they should be allowed to at the very least talk with a surgeon about what that surgery actually entails and the potential risks and specifications involved. Nobody should just be immediately stopped from pursuing that information from the start with the presumptuous declaration of "Oh, you wouldn't want that."
You may think it cruel but when a white witch pisses me off I go through her etsy listings for native bird feathers and forward it to fish and wildlife services
im so done with seeing articles about kids and screen time that doesnt mention parent behaviors even once. “kids are always on their phones” so are the parents! which the kids look to for how they should behave! ipad babies didn’t chose to only play on their ipads, thats what their parents gave them!
an anecdotal example: when i was a kid, all my parents would do in their minimal free time was watch tv and then they would be surprised when in my sister and i’s minimal free time we would also only watch tv/play video games. they scolded us for not reading books, but they never read books. they scolded us for not going outside but they never went outside.
“kids are always on their damn phones” my mom is in her 60s and opens up candy crush anytime she’s sitting — it isnt just the kids
i love being trans so much. after i first came out, i was scared, i was afraid to be a tranny, but 10 years later, i'm more in love with the experience than i was when i found out what "transgender" meant and felt alive. i love my identity, i love being able to play with expression and presentation freely now that i know who i am. i love doing drag. i love spending time with other trans people the most out of other queer people. i just love being trans and love seeing other people be happy being trans. i love seeing people transform their identities and bodies in ways that actually fit them. it's awesome!
we do in fact deserve to celebrate this experience. the act of being transgender is one of transformation and ultimately, change for the better. we are allowed to experience joy, elation, and pride. we are allowed to love being trans. it's healthy, in fact. i love being trans and i love every trans person's unique expression of transness. we rule
I am a multigender bisexual. Before I began to focus my efforts into transgender and multigender activism, I was BIG into bisexual activism. But, because of this, I’ve noticed something peculiar… Something that other multigenders have noticed too.
A lot of modern-day transmultiphobia (particularly those directed towards those who are both male and female) is, quite simply (and I mean this in a very literal way), repackaged biphobia from the peak of biphobic discourse.
This includes, but isn’t limited to:
The “fence-sitter” perspective. Multigenders and bisexuals are seen as sitting on the fence of the binary. We can belong in both communities (gay and straight, male and female). But because of this ability to be in both, we are not allowed into either.
This is because of us being seen as “tainted by the other gender,” or as an “invader”. Both the idea that bisexuals are less “purely” WLW or MLM than their gay counterparts, and the “men vs non-men” dichotomy that we’re seeing be put up, are evidence of this. When it comes to discussion gay and lesbian M/F multigenders, this comparison is very apt. I mean, “your association with men / women has made you unable to belong with us” is VERY on the nose.
The view that it’s “just a phase.” Both existence as a bisexual and as a multigender, from my experience, is seen as something you will go through before you “choose a side”, before you “settle down” with a real, PROPER choice. One of the two choices that you’re given, rather than both.
Making people angry because of how we make them insecure. “If this person attracted to men and women can belong in the queer community,” wonders the biphobe, “What does that mean for the state of my queerness?” And likewise, the transmultiphobe asks, “If this person is both a man and a woman, then what does that mean for my attraction?”
I believe that this is because bisexuality and multigenderism both have… “Both.” In a world, with a binary, that expects — DEMANDS — that you pick either/or, saying “both” (or, heaven forbid, “both, and…”) will always be met with extreme rejection and isolation.
Multigender and bisexual activists could learn a lot from each other. We are so often told to hide or cut off one part of ourselves in order to fit into some sort of (any sort of!) set of norms, and to conform to the male/female binary. We fuck with people’s views of sexuality and gender merely by existing, and we are nothing short of revolutionary for that reason.
so. this is hard. here goes:
for the last six-ish weeks, I've had an exceptionally challenging time of things re: my haunted devil body being exceptionally haunted and full of devils, and I have missed a lot of work. a lot of work. might be losing my job soon, in fact, but I'm trying not to think about that.
I'm trying to crawl my way out of the hole, but I have nothing in the bank right now and no money coming in, literally this is a screenshot of my account from today, and it's not showing the insurance payment that put me $50 in the negative this morning.
I have no other savings, my credit card's maxed out, I don't know how I'm going to pay my upcoming rent and my cupboard's down to baking ingredients and canned vegetables, so the sitch is looking pretty gd grim for me right now.
if anyone wants to donate and can afford to be kind, I'm linking my paypal and cashapp below, but I'd prefer to be able to offer something in exchange.
I think most y'all are following me because it is known that I make quilts, but that's mostly a side effect of my true hobby: collecting fabric. (this is a joke. mostly.)
I don't know that I have the energy to commit to making quilts or other complicated goods right now, but I do have a truly massive stash and excellent color sense. I've pulled these curated fat quarter collections as examples of what I have on offer:
this is a very small sample of what I have in my stash; I've been collecting fabrics since 2014, so I have a massive collection of rare & out-of-print fabrics from Moda, Free Spirit, Windham, RKaufman and other brands, a portion of which I've catalogued and uploaded to gdrive here.
that's nowhere near my full collection, it's just a jumping off point of what I've got to work with. I'd put fq bundles on etsy or something similar to make it easier, but the total lack of funds has temporarily kiboshed that idea.
in the meantime, I'm selling individual fat quarters for $2.50 each and curated stash-builder sets of five like the ones above for $15. I'd also be happy to make coordinating pot holders not unlike this one at $35 for a pair.
(pls don't ask me for oven mitts, I don't want to talk about one of my greatest failures)
NOTE: all fabric comes from a smoke, pet and fragrance-free environment, and will not be prewashed. I know that makes a difference to a lot of folks, not just me.
I'm also open to assembling pre-cut quilt & other craft kits, PM me to discuss what you're looking to make and I'll figure out if I can make it happen for you.
I appreciate any and all help more than I have words to communicate, and I know I'm pretty damn wordy! I'm pretty far down in the weeds at the moment, and I need to raise around $1800 in the next ten days in order to pay rent, catch up on my bills and pay for food and medication.
please help out a chronically ill artist and shop my stash!
cashapp
paypal
I’ve been going back and forth on posting anything rebloggable about Eden Knight, because simply posting something feels like…such a non-action. But it’s worse to say nothing at all, and the people who loved her clearly want her story to be known. So I’ll try.
A Saudi trans woman named Eden Knight died by suicide after her parents hired two American “fixers” and a Saudi lawyer to traffic her back to Saudi Arabia and forcibly detransition her. Her loved ones have put together a document about this tragedy in hopes that something can be done:
I feel like the cultural piece of this hasn’t get discussed, and i understand why; I’ve seen plenty of utterly sickening commentary from people who can’t be normal about the idea of a trans Saudi, but I feel I’m in a position to break the silence around this, as being a queer Arab myself, the nuances aren’t lost on me. So I’ll try that too:
Arab culture is patriarchal (like most cultures are), communal, and honor-based, which contributes to many Arab parents wholeheartedly believing that they own their children and that they need to control them to prevent any “dishonorable” behavior, even at the cost of death. This is not unique to Arab culture, and I’m really simplifying here, but this is why honor killings happen, and I think it’s remiss to not name the honor-based violence at play in what happened to Eden. She threatened her family’s honor by not adhering to the gendered role coercively assigned to her, and so they inflicted the conditions that led to her death upon her. And I can guarantee that, had her parents not had the money to hire some of their fellow monsters to destroy their daughter, they’d have recruited extended family to stalk her or found another way instead. Honor culture is self-policing.
It’s also remiss to not name the other forces that killed Eden: transmisogyny in both the United States and Saudi Arabia—the latter obviously being worse than the former, but fleeing to the former DID NOT PROTECT HER, so USAmericans can hold off from being smug about her being Saudi, thanks—and her migrant status. The State, capital-S, and its borders assisted Eden’s parents in this.
We need support networks that can actually help trans people with complex cultural/legal situations like this. We need support networks to prevent honor-based violence, which primarily impacts women and LGBT people of any gender. “Just cut off your parents” isn’t helpful when you’ve been raised to internalize this level of guilt and shame, and it especially isn’t helpful when your parents are willing to find you and abduct you to protect their image. There needs to be SOMETHING to prevent tragedies as horrific as this. I can’t say I have the answers. But there needs to be some understanding of how far this honor shit can go, how it can cross borders, and how even people who have found community outside their abusive families can still be very vulnerable to it.
I’m so sorry, Eden. You deserved the world. Rest in peace.
…”Will you tag (something that is not a common phobia or trauma trigger)?” is always an appropriate request. Even if you’re asking “will you tag for the letter ‘e’,” you’re not crossing boundaries unless the person you’ve asking has already said, clearly, that they will not tag for a thing.
However, “no,” is an equally appropriate reply. It’s nice to have reasons (no I will not tag frogs because I post too many frogs and I forget, meaning that the tag will not protect you; no, I will not tag Disney princesses because it says “Disney princesses” in my blog description and you knew this was a dead dove before you took a bite), but they are absolutely not required.
“Will you tag for birds of prey?” “No. Please unfollow me if you require that tag.” is a perfectly polite exchange.
Help for Lola!
Lola is a Nigerian trans woman who needs safe housing IMMEDIATELY. Her neighborhood is getting more and more dangerous as Nigeria gets more and more homophobic and transphobic, so she has to move. She's had to put her education on hold because of this. She needs funds for both safe housing and also hormones, so we're setting the goal at $1400 USD to help her.
i dont know what autistic person needs to hear this but your sensory wellness is so important. and that goes beyond just avoiding things that trigger immediate distress. sensory enrichment is vital too! do things that make you feel safe and comforted and happy and alive. it's not insignificant. it's not silly. it's part of taking care of your lovely autistic self and enjoying life. your life, which thrives when your wants and needs are met.