I Had A Whole Thing Typed Up But Not In The Mood. The Original Post Was A Butch Women Talking About Her

Justice RBG's death has just been announced, what happens now? I'm terrified of what's going to happen if the GOP manage to replace her; I don't know if they even CAN, if there's enough time, or if that could somehow be prevented until after the inauguration. I don't know what's going to happen next but I'm afraid of what this will mean.

Not to be an anarchist on main but the answer is always:

Connect with your local communities to share resources and make sure everyone is safe.

learn new skills whenever you can, especially survival, communication, and first aid skills. Look for CERT trainings as a good source of free classes and hands-on education.

join and support unions whenever possible.

look to the activists of the past for guidance: if the ACA is overturned start staging die-ins (and if you’re a medical professional then now is the time to work with your colleagues to figure out how you’re going to provide care to people who are going to lose their medical coverage)

work local; the supreme court isn’t something that you can control, but maybe you can have an impact on your city’s zoning policies or on whether or not unused land becomes a community food garden.

do jail support, film cops, and listen to cop communications so that you can report on their movements to the people they threaten.

feed the hungry.

hack the planet.

If not you then who? If you see a need, fill it.

Take care of yourself and take care of each other.

Shit is fucked up, the government is fucked up, the world is fucked up. It probably won’t always be that way, but right now all that you can do is make the part of the world that you’re in contact with a little better, so do that.

I saw that you mentioned butch dysphoria ... can you please post resources or just any knowledge that you have? Im trying to figure out who I am.

Hey there, that’s a huge question, but I’ll share a little of what I’ve learned as a dysphoric butch person myself. I know that plenty of butches experience dysphoria to varying degrees, including women who readily identify themselves as cis — it’s way more common among non-trans people than I think most people realize, especially among gay people (but certainly not limited to them)! You are definitely not alone, and you’re also not doing gender “wrong” if you experience discomfort with social roles or gendered aspects of your body but don’t identify as trans. And if you do determine that describing yourself as trans is the best and most accurate way to frame your experience in the world, that’s an ethically neutral decision despite The Discourse™️ suggesting otherwise. Feeling dysphoric also doesn’t mean you need to commit to any one specific course of action to alleviate your discomfort, whether that means binding, using HRT, or getting top surgery, and it also doesn’t mean that you’ve just got some internalized misogyny/homophobia to unpack and once you do your dysphoria will magically vanish overnight with sufficient therapy. It’s complicated and none of have the one “right answer” for what to do about dysphoria and how it shapes our concepts of ourselves!

It definitely does help to do some serious thinking about your dysphoria — what tends to make it flare up, what body parts or social situations it seems to be attached to, how it impacts your daily life — and then work from there to address it a step at a time. I’m dysphoric about my chest, and don’t bind regularly any more due to compression-induced nerve pain (which can and does happen even with high-quality binders), but I’ve done a lot of mental/emotional work on body image to push back against negative self-talk, wear clothing that conceals my chest without actively compressing it (hence that post on 80s fashion, though I dress like a Winchester brother rather than Marty McFly), and do physical activities that help me refocus on what my body can do rather than what it looks like, such as hiking and swimming. Friends with dysphoria (of various gender identities!) report that this combination of mental reframing of your body as Not A Bad or Wrong Thing, distracting yourself from your image on bad days, and doing positive and enjoyable body-oriented activities helps a lot, even when they’ve had surgery, taken HRT, or otherwise mitigated dysphoria physically. Hang in there! You don’t have to have the answers yet (or ever, honestly), but it helps to remember that you are you, fundamentally, and that any realizations you have and decisions you make about how you occupy your body and the language you use to describe it is just part of your continuing evolution as a human being.

practicing female separatism by being female and being alone all the time always

As a butch who struggles w dysphoria, the temptation to wear compression tanks, get a double mastectomy, take just a lil bit of T to try to get some kind of results that just might last afterwards, even though I know it’s detrimental to my health- it’s crushing sometimes.

And I do have to put myself first and distance myself from butches who encourage doing these things. Because seeing that makes that little voice go, “oh yeah, look how easy that is, you could definitely pull that off no problem.” And no.

I want to fight that unhealthy part of me. I want to accept my body as it is. Breasts and hips and all.

Enough is enough. Sometimes we have to protect ourselves and other women struggling with dysphoria by standing firm in what we believe and keeping our boundaries up.

I know there’s a lot of overlap in the butch and transmasc communities. But I have no interest in interacting with dysphoric women who promote needless hormones and surgeries or harmful practices like binding. It isn’t a reflection on those women’s worth or value- it’s a protective reaction and sometimes fierce anger that more and more women like me are transitioning.

I’m not gonna do it.

I’m going to learn how to live with myself the way I am. I’m not going to lie to myself and say that taking testosterone and getting unnecessary surgeries is okay or something to even be desired.

And it’s an uphill battle every day, but I know I’m not alone, and that I’ll get to the point where I can stop wishing my body and voice were something they aren’t.

This may be the oldest known drawing of a supernova, found in the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan. Scholars found this odd rock art with two “suns,” and dated it to 3600 BCE, which roughly coincides with supernova HB9’s explosion.

requested by ziraangel

TERF Tips #270

For dysphoria:

Keep telling yourself that you can’t escape your biology! That definitely won’t lead to any suicide!

Forget about your dysphoria!

Keep telling yourself that technically all womynly womyn have dysphoria! And that they all overcome it somehow! Yeah, like my mom knew what the hell was wrong with me when puberty hit me 10× harder than other kids!

Punch a hole through the wall, and pull out that sword that you’ve kept hidden for centuries, and pretend to slice it in half, so that it’s now dead.

New lino print! Based on an old poster that I saw online but the source of which I couldn’t track down. They’re up in my shop if anyone’s interested! (shop link in tumblr header)

My Cat, Keiko Hiratsuka Moore.

Ive spent the past few months reading some radfem and detrans related stuff, just curious and trying to educate myself. Then quite recently Ive basically started to feel like "oh shit maybe i actually should detransition" and its freaking me out. Im not sure if im just going crazy being in quarantine and making rash decisions, or if all the time as home gave me time for introspection to come to this conclusion. i feel so lost lol

tbh, this is how i found myself on a path to full detransition, not just stopping hormones. i just wanted some perspective—what i found was a full paradigm shift.

you didn’t ask for advice, so take or leave this: you don’t have to figure it all out right now. give yourself permission, space, and—importantly—time to see how you’re feeling, to understand what you believe about gender and sex and all of this messy shit. and if you get a handle on how you feel about that, then see what you want to do. you don’t even have to DO it yet, just see what you want. and if you continue wanting it, take small steps toward that thing, then pause and ask yourself how it feels. do you feel more authentic? do you feel less confused? are you afraid, and if so, what of? are these fears realistic? are they worth confronting anyway?

the time in quarantine has absolutely given you time for introspection, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to reach a conclusion just yet. there are actually no rules to how your life must go. that’s entirely up to you. all i can suggest is, spend the time asking the questions that come up for you, and try to answer them. try to figure out what YOU believe and why you believe it; am i living a life that satisfies me? am i living in a way that excites me? don’t worry about anyone else, what they might think of you, how they might react to your questioning or any conclusions you draw—the only person for whom those questions and answers matter is you. ultimately, you’re the person who is guaranteed to be with you your whole life—so that’s the person whose opinion matters most.