237 posts
Tbh I just straight up don't trust any cis person who sits around with their friends and talks about how gross other people's bodies are. If you can't accept that some men have small dicks or that some women aren't curvy I don't trust you to actually respect trans bodies
Maybe I'm weird for saying that but idk it's pretty isolating when it seems like cis bodies aren't even acceptable to so many people and my body is so much less acceptable by societies standards
if you’re the type of person to say “be gay, do crimes” but get upset or uncomfortable when one of your friends ((or literally anyone for that matter)) has to steal food from the grocery store in order to survive, then maybe you don’t actually believe in your silly little motto.
i love being t4t I love gender nonconformity... i love girls who arent girls and women who are men and people with a million xenogenders and dykefags and femme trans men and butch trans girls. nothing is sexier than someone who spits in the face of the gender binary, and our very existence is not conforming to gender ideals
ALSO. on the concept of funky genders. "socially unacceptable" genders or "genderweird" people i love you. transmascs who are girls i love you. transfems who are men i love you. transmascs who feel transfem and transfems who feel transmasc i love you. everyone who feels like their gender is too "weird" or "complicated" or are an "oxymoron or self-contradictory" i love you and we are all trans and good and community and perfect ok.
Hey! I have personally really enjoyed all the guides you have written about cruising, Grindr and your other sex guides. Would you be interested (or maybe I have completely missed this) about writing a guide to sex as a disabled person? I am personally very interested in sex but scared to join the party and cruising culture because of my disability, chronic pain and discomfort (and my questioning to how I can keep covid safe in hook up culture).
Hi there!
This was a complicated ask for me to receive, I think, because it made me very happy to be asked and that someone is asking and feels empowered to ask, but also I just don't feel I'm equipped to answer it - I think that in the past year or two I've been unpacking a lot of feelings about disability and particularly the ways in which I mask or just don't openly discuss disability with ableds and randoms, there's a lot of old anxiety and pain there for me that I'm just not done working with.
Basically, I'm not equipped, I don't think, to write more extensively about cruising and casual sex with disability in mind as I'm exploring it, especially as I've become a lot more disabled in recent years.
I will say that like... For me, what's been most positive in my sex life, and indeed my life as a whole, is being in community with other disabled people, and sex with other disabled people, particularly those who either have similar disabilities to my own and/or who have a lot of experience with others who are similarly disabled, means that they're going to be more aware of my potential limitations.
For me, being autistic and also having various issues - arthritis, some old injuries probably as a result of hypermobility or whatever, my asthma - means that I'm often not very cognizant of my limitations until I reach those limitations exactly, and then I'm immediately like, okay, I have to stop RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW.
With other disabled people, autistic or otherwise, I don't have an issue tapping out like that - and with partners who aren't physically disabled or chronically ill, but are still autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, that's grand. But with like, normie hookups on Grindr? That's a lot more complex.
Like, I frequently don't use words like "arthritis" or similar, I might mention that I have an injury, but normally just that I prefer certain positions, until after we've had sex because of the ways in which people treat and desexualise disabled bodies - a while back I had a hook up, mentioned my arthritis after fucking, and he was immediately like, "Oh, there's this crystal healer on YouTube" etc lmao.
So yeah, I would recommend seeking community with other disabled people if you can - a lot of BDSM spaces and broader BDSM communities tend to have a lot of disabled people in them. Obviously a lot of the older veterans in these communities will become more disabled as they grow older, and so elder members (as in actually old and elderly, not Tumblr's definition of "elder" that's like 30+ lmao) of kink and queer communities, but also disabled people for various reasons are often drawn to kink and power play and different forms of sex work, and subsequently our expertise shows up a lot in these communities. You can always enter these spaces for the social benefits even if you're not interested in or able for harder play, etc.
One benefit about these is that there'll frequently be more online spaces or smaller, more limited munches - I obviously can't promise that people in your area will definitely be covid safe or even super covid aware, but you should at the very least be able to check these boundaries online before you approach them in person, or if you approach them at all, you know?
I did an interview with Transpired Media a few weeks ago, and part of mine and Anonsee Maytrix's discussion was about our respective experiences being desexualised as disabled trans people in queer communities, and while I don't have any more extended guides or similar, this video might scratch a bit of an itch?
But yeah, I just don't feel like I have more valuable advice or useful input, I'm afraid, as I'm still exploring my own feelings and limitations myself other than just... going stealth about being disabled.
I'd definitely encourage people to put their own resources in the replies and reblogs if they do desire!
Love bombing is not a euphemism for "too much affection too soon," or "high desire for contact."
"Love bombing" is a term originally used in the context of cults to describe a deliberate and coordinated recruitment method that involved feigning friendship and interest in a potential recruit, via flattery, flirtation, physical affection, and very directed positive attention to everything the recruit says in order to lure them into the cult.
Since cults and abusive relationships operate in similar ways and use similar tactics, love bombing in an interpersonal relationship looks like manufacturing closeness in order to trap someone into a relationship in which the abuser has all the control.
And I know these days there's a million bullshit junky articles out there that make you think this is a symptom of cluster b personality disorders, but there is no way for you to be love bombing somebody without realizing it.
If you are an affectionate person and the level of affection and attention you give makes someone uncomfortable, you are not "accidentally" abusing them.
If you are uncomfortable with the level of affection and attention someone is paying you, they are not de facto abusing you.
Love bombing is about using someone's desire for human connection to fast track them into a situation you control and will feel disinclined to leave.
sending love out tonight to everyone who is progressively losing their abilities, whether that's movement, ability to walk, eyesight, or hearing.
it's hard to come to terms with the fact that you can't do things that you used to be able to do. I'll be honest, it feels like you're losing control of your life. it can feel very isolating and hopeless. its scary and overwhelming, and it's so hard to deal with.
you are not less than just because you can do less. im proud of you for still being here, and i wish you ease with adjusting to new ways of life. please take care of yourself, i love you.
April 28, 2023
I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this
What is the EARN IT Act?
The EARN IT Act (s. 1207) has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country.
This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.
Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)
This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230. If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.
NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.
The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.
EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.
As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.
This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.
This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.
Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.
It will make CSAM much much worse.
One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.
(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)
The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.
I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.
HOW TO FIGHT BACK
EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.
CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.
This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.
(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.
2. Sign these petitions!
Link to Petition 1
Link to Petition 2
3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE
If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.
Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.
TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.
other trans people stop downplaying the violence faced by trans men challenge (impossible)
Okay I made a gofundme to help pay for hotel stays and the last of my top surgery fees. I’ve never done this before so I’m extremely uncomfortable and feeling Very Bad about it, but here’s the link. There is going to be absolutely no guilt-tripping here so don’t feel in any way obligated to give me money lol. Oh ew I also just realized this has my full name on it. Big yikes there
The best part of worldbuilding is making something that sucks. Magic schools with bullshit rules that don't work. Spaceships that are built stupid. My favourite thing to do is to make an inconvenient world that is full of stupid things for boring reasons, and then putting a character int here and making them live with that.
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.
you're only 21 so i feel terrible potentially giving you this responsibility but you have a platform so please help. tumblr user cunt/boy/supremacy reblogged a reblog wherein i (0 followers, only blocked and reported bots) discuss sexual abuse that i underwent that i shared knowing my following is 0 just to add context in case he misunderstood, specifically to mock it after i clarified the type of situation that was being discussed in an example of the kinds of abuse that transmascs can undergo in my initial post. the initial post has a lot of problems and i directly admit that; my biggest worry was people assuming that it means we should advocate for more control over hrt, which I further clarify we should not do in the tags; short bullet point paragraphs aren't enough for complexity and I get that now. but, i directly asked him to delete it bc I didn't want him to share that and I kind of expect better from other trans people but he's since started going off about transmasc rights activists and it's been over a day. idk how much attention and following he has but i directly asked him to not share that in case he does have an actual following, because i was actually intending on deleting it after finally getting his attention in dms - not new to tumblr but it's been a good decade, but he's just been reblogging and posting direct antitransmasculine takes since. i hate callouts and he's really just showing how much of a douche he is on his own blog by responding the way he has even just publicly without my "please remove this" statement which is in dms, but please help. please help
I'm genuinely sorry that you had to go through that. It's absolutely cruel - especially coming from another trans person. You have all my support, including if you ever want a safe place to discuss about your issues. You might have already done this, but I suggest to block the person who is harassing you (I'll block him too), and not continue to engage.
Good luck, I wish you the best.
A very beautiful image of these smiley blackfoot. It seemed everything was alright…
Photograph by Mary T. S. Schaffer in 1907.
A long ass beginner level tutorial for all of you comic folks who want to start using sketchup for your backgrounds but don’t know how to get started.
http://www.genkigirl.com/finesometimesrain/?p=771
Hi! Gentile here, I've been reading your blog and find it very interesting + informative, thank you for being such a good source of information and explaining things so clearly and calmly despite all the nonsense you have to deal with.
I hope it's okay to ask this, since I understand it's a very solemn / sensitive subject. In a few of your posts that mention / discuss the Tetragrammaton, you mention that the knowledge of how to say or pronounce the name has been lost. As far as I understand, Hebrew has a phonemic orthography (ie each grapheme / letter corresponds to a phoneme / elementary sound unit). If that's the case, could one theoretically know how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton from combining the sounds those four letters make according to normal grammar / pronunciation rules, or is it the case that the knowledge of how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton exists independently of the knowledge of how to pronounce the constituent letters? Or is it something to do with how Hebrew orthography / phonology has changed over time, and modern Hebrew phonology wouldn't be accurate to the pronunciation as it would have existed before the fall of the second temple? Or is there a nuance in Hebrew orthography / phonology I'm missing?
I understand of course you wouldn't *want* to say it out loud anyway given how sacred and taboo it is, I suppose I'm just curious at the semantic properties of the knowledge of the pronunciation. (If this ask is inappropriate or offensive, I sincerely apologise and please do not feel obliged to post it / reply to it.)
Hi there, thanks so much for your kind words and happy Friday!
So there’s a few things at play here, because you are right, generally speaking, the Hebrew alphabet is a phonemic orthography which would generally lend itself to being pronounceable even in the absence of unbroken oral teaching (leaving aside theological and cultural boundaries on doing so, for the moment). But there are a few confounding factors:
1) Hebrew, both ancient and modern, doesn’t have vowels in its alphabet. To indicate vowels typically it uses nekudot, but that’s not done in texts meant to be read by fluent adult speakers/readers and Jewish holy texts don’t contain them. So we don’t have hard evidence of what vowels go with the Tetragrammaton’s consonants.
2) Some of the consonants in the Tetragrammaton can be used to indicate the presence of certain vowels, but they don’t always get used that way. So there’s no way to know of their presence specifically indicates those vowels or they’re being used purely as consonants and it’s coincidence.
3) Pronunciation of some vowels and consonants, although it does not seem to have been a substantial shift, has changed over time (and not in uniform ways, because of the diaspora).
So certainly scholars fluent in the various ancient forms of Hebrew can make educated hypotheses, but there are confounding factors. And, of course, because of the theological and cultural restrictions on the speaking/writing of the Tetragrammaton there is no unbroken tradition we can look at to confirm any of those educated guesses. And that’s before we even get to the limited number of Jewish scholars who are even willing to try to discern pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton for religious reasons.
especially when it comes to women having facial hair there are a surprising amount of "feminists" who are just offended by the proposition that some women don't see their facial hair as tragic. Their feelings do not matter because every woman with facial hair should just wish it didn't exist and "automatically" separate themselves from whatever insults they use. You literally do not have a feminist argument to stand on with this. It is still body shaming and it is still bad.
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.
😢💔 Homeless, desperate, and losing hope, need help with meds (Latuda 60mg) - $242 CAD a month 💔😢
Your support means more than words can express to someone who feels so desperate and lost. If you can help in any way, even by just sharing this post, I'd be eternally grateful.
Your kindness means the world to me, and your assistance will help me through this difficult period. ❤️I'm also actively pounding the pavement to find a job, but it's extremely difficult when you don’t have an address or a place to shower and be presentable to potential employers. My goal is to raise $1,400 CAD for first and last months rent by the end of the summer, to rent a room 🏠 and finally have a stable place to call home. Any donations will be first applied to my medication, and then to my housing goal.
Even if you can't donate, please consider sharing my post. It might reach someone who can help, and just knowing that people care is the only thing keeping me going in this dark, lonely time.
If you are able to help me I’m in Canada and the only thing available here is PayPal and e-transfer, we don’t have any cash apps available. Thank you for considering me. 🙏
If you prefer to not use PayPal I have e transfer set up. It works like a cash App. Works the same way as it would to make a purchase on line, you log in to your bank and send the amount you choose and it will automatically deposit.
The atheists who hate the terms "culturally Christian" or "Christianized" atheist/atheism, need to come to a reckoning with the fact that most of the people talking about the phenomenon of Christian cultural practices and default assumptions remaining present in atheist communities in historically Christian and Christianized parts of the world, are in fact also atheists.
Jewish atheists, and other atheists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds latched on to "culturally Christian" as a term to describe the ways in which atheist communities dominated by people from majority Christian, or majority Christianized, countries, are hostile to us and don't recognize our forms of atheism and secularism as legitimate, in spite of the fact that we also don't believe in any deity. it also became a convenient term to talk about the ways in which atheists from culturally Christian backgrounds frequently insist that to be properly secular, properly an atheist, you have to assimilate into a specific set of cultural practices viewed by these particular atheists as culturally and religiously neutral, AKA secular. "Culturally Christian" is a convenient term used to point out that these are not in fact culturally neutral practices, and that there are forms of atheism that do not include them, and include other cultural practices, and that atheists from other cultural backgrounds should not have to assimilate into another culture, for our atheism to be considered valid.
So like, the fact that the response to the term culturally Christian is to paint the non culturally Christian people using it, as religious people going after atheists as atheists, is both an example of a culturally Christian phenomenon, and also really obnoxious and ironic, given that the people who are making this argument are usually making it from within the atheist community. We are also atheists, which is why this phenomenon actually matters to us. This is an intra-community discussion, and trying to frame it as the mean religious people going after the atheists, erases our atheism, and is really annoying, and the only thing it serves to do, is to protect the people using this framing, from having to confront what those of us talking about the phenomenon are actually saying.