it is hard to explain but there is something so unwell about the cultural fear of ugliness. the strange quiet irradiation of any imperfect sight. the pores and the stomachs and the legs displaced into a digital trashbin. somehow this effect spilling over - the removal of a grinning strangers in the back of a picture. of placing more-photogenic clouds into a frame. of cleaning up and arranging breakfast plates so the final image is of a table overflowing with surplus - while nobody eats, and instead mimes food moving towards their mouth like tantalus.
ever-thinner ever-more-muscled ever-prettier. your landlord's sticky white paint sprayed over every surface. girlchildren with get-ready-with-me accounts and skincare routines. beige walls and beige floors and beige toys in toddler hands. AI-generated "imagined prettier" birds and bugs and bees.
pretty! fuckable! impossible! straighten teeth. use facetune and lightroom and four other products. remove the cars along the street from the video remove the spraypaint from the garden wall remove the native plants from their home, welcome grass. welcome pretty. let the lot that walmart-still-owns lay fallow and rotting. don't touch that, it's ugly! close your eyes.
erect anti-homelessness spikes. erect anti-bird spikes. now it looks defensive, which is better than protective. put the ramp at the back of the building, you don't want to ruin the aesthetic of anything.
you are a single person in this world, and in this photo! don't let the lives of other people ruin what would otherwise be a shared moment! erase each person from in front of the tourist trap. erase your comfortable shoes and AI generate platforms. you weren't smiling perfectly, smile again. no matter if you had been genuinely enjoying a moment. you are not in a meadow with friends, you're in a catalogue of your own life! smile again! you know what, forget it.
we will just edit the right face in.
Transmasculine experiences in sex work are often rendered invisible, so let's share them! Reblog to help get more eyes on this, so we can fundraise enough to pay all the contributors.
The Kickstarter for Working Guys: A Transmasculine Sex Worker Anthology is now live.
If you're curious about trans people who do sex work, read about what will be included in the book and get yourself a copy:
treated myself to a little 'sleeping for eight hours' last night but i need to be careful lest i grow dependent on such luxuries
tiktok stunt haha funny. please talk about the ice raids
'ritual for passage into manhood for a new man' via ftm international, issue 41 (june 1998)
not to keep harping on this but if you HATE shaving your body or any other part of your "beauty routine": stop doing it. just stop doing it, at least for a little while (maybe when you don't have a lot going on if that helps) and HONESTLY gauge how it makes you feel. is this feeling better or worse than the amount of time, stress, and money the routine takes? do YOU actually prefer how you looked before, or are you only worried about what others think? if you stopped doing the routine forever, could you find other ways to feel better about yourself with that energy?
when I was like 19 and the idea of not shaving my legs anymore first occurred to me (bc I had a Cool Progressive Boyfriend that Didn't Care) i just stopped and it was immediately like... a quantifiably large chunk of unnecessary anxiety just sloughed off my life forever. instantaneously I got rid a bunch of effort and stress I had been accepting as normal, and replaced it with more time to do what actually made me feel 'ready' in the morning, like hygiene, coffee, preparing for my activities etc.
and i DONT feel self conscious about body hair personally but even if I did, no amount of shame over hair could outweigh how much easier my life is. not just bc 'shaving annoying' or 'long showers' or whatever, but like. yeah I don't waste as much time getting ready anymore, and I also don't have to realize last minute before some leg-showing event that im unfit for display and have a whole self-esteem plummeting anxiety attack about whether I should rush it unsafely and risk being late, cut up, and stressed out before the event, or go With Hair and feel judged the whole time. i don't have to go through any of those emotions and when anyone does comment on my hair rudely, im in a much healthier place to deal with it and tell them to fuck off rather than validate THEIR fucked up standards by feeling bad.
once I realized I didn't give a shit and neither did anyone I cared about, it also gave me the freedom to cut out a bunch of other shit I was only doing (or Thinking I Should) bc it was what girls Have To Do to be presentable. fuck shaving fuck waxing fuck eyebrow shaping fuck concealer fuck multi step skincare fuck shapewear fuck lip fillers fuck contouring fuck teeth whitening fuck all of it, you do not need to change ANYTHING about how you look Every Single Day.
for those of you about to say "but I like being shaven/wearing makeup/literally pulling hair out of my face painfully every day etc etc etc":
have fun and mod your avatar all you want but for gods sake if you hate it and complain about how long it takes and all the stuff you "have" to buy or do just to "get ready" - you do not have to. you're not just having fun. you are not getting Ready, you are making your mood and experience worse for yourself, which is going to make you feel unready and unprepared for actually being yourself comfortably.
More queer people need to know that discrimination against intersex people isn't just bigots being bigots. It's rooted in the fact we live in a world that rejects our existence at a fundamental level.
There's only M or F on every job application.
There's only a M or F on every government form.
There's only M or F on everyone's birth certificate.
There's only M or F in everyone's mind.
Even in queer spaces, people ask if you are AMAB or AFAB. Terms borrowed from our community, then simply reduced back to M or F.
When you go to a doctor, they ask if you are M or F, regardless of how your body actually works. Any anatomy or traits you have that does not fit your M or F designation is met with pity or disgust.
You're seen as M* or F*, an aberration of what is "normal", a faulty M or faulty F, a body with a problem.
The intersex experience is being constantly reminded people believe I don't exist.
This is Money Snake. She only appears every 312 years.
If you reblog her picture within the next twenty-five seconds you will have good luck and fortune for the rest of your life.
one thing no one ever teaches you is that you can just make things nicer and more intentional- you can take your energy drink, pour it in a rocks glass over ice with a slice of lime on the rim, and sip it slow. and you'll think, "wow i am the biggest faggot to have ever lived". and you know what? you're right.
shit(and sometimes serious)posts of a 22yo trans man
389 posts