celira

[celira]

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter.

[celira]

No wonder death grips fucking hate their fans, relistening to their music, it's so visceral and personal for it to be boiled down to "haha funny black guy scream xd" is insulting

[celira]

on the bright side, feeling so so so fed and lucky by choosing to nurture old friendships and being held by them in turn. damn, people are good

being in the same town as people you have known and seen and may not know or see any more - but still think of recurringly - is strange.

see, one of the strange things about adulthood that never stops being strange is that you can fully run out of free time before you actually run out of time to be alive, and in order to free time up, you have to give something or someone up. but the space they occupy in your brain or your heart is still full.

on this visit, i am seeing old friends and going to a wedding and hitting a full 8 different itinerary items in 3.5 days and still trying to be mindful of the recurring lesson that i need to make time for myself in order to be able to be present at any of them, especially when my battery is so empty; that giving up load-bearing rest doesn't really mean gaining much enduring in return; that if the thing you give up is your limits, then there's no one left to show up.

but also, that means: i've chosen to see some people over others. some friendships are watered and some lie fallow. every step creates another fork in the road. this is something you learn to accept, and often do without thinking, because to do otherwise is to be motionless. but i still think of the ones i don't make room for. they still make room in my mind, and that is a small but manifold tragedy of life.

there is a finite number of times i will see anyone, and in truth, that has always been so, but to number them is to watch the counter tick down, and to wilfully increment other counters down to give these ones more time, and so on.

anyway that's on the vagaries of friendship and knowing more people than you have time to love in a way that grows, because intent and desire are infinite but time and space in the shape of a human body are not, and love both gives and takes. and that's on being on tumblr when i haven't eaten or drank anything yet today WHOOPS

[celira]

[“Given any binary, it’s fun to look for some hidden third, and the reason why the third was hidden says a lot about a culture. The choice between two of anything is not a choice at all but rather the opportunity to subscribe to the value system that holds the two presented choices as mutually exclusive alternatives. Once we choose one or the other, we’ve given up our imagination in favor of buying into the system that perpetuates that binary. When, for example, I lived my life saying I was a man or a woman, I was tacitly supporting all the rules of the gender system that defines those two identities. I supported those rules in order to belong, or rather to not be an outsider, a non-belonger.

I began to analyze gender dynamics in terms of group dynamics. One fascinating point stood out as relevant to both gender and group dynamics, providing a link between the two: compliance within a group is set by the naming of good and bad behavior; the former is laudable, the latter is punishable. Either/or is used as a control mechanism, as in, “Either you live up to our high standards here in the club, or your membership will be revoked.”]

kate bornstein, from gender outlaw: men, women, and the rest of us, 1995

[celira]

Text: decoupling pregnancy from femininity means accurate and more inclusive language and treatment, but it also allows cis women to refuse motherhood without refusing womanhood, which is great for feminism and terrifying for misogyny.

–THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS. As a sterile cis woman who doesn’t want to have children anyway I feel this is every ounce of my being. “Define woman” types tend to do so in a way that excludes me too, so I got to stand with my trans sisters.

[celira]

[celira]

This one has been a real puzzle!

Plan of Canaan House, from Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Completely non official and compiled by me through an (obsessive) analysis of the text. Beware of spoilers if you haven't read the book

[celira]

being in the same town as people you have known and seen and may not know or see any more - but still think of recurringly - is strange.

see, one of the strange things about adulthood that never stops being strange is that you can fully run out of free time before you actually run out of time to be alive, and in order to free time up, you have to give something or someone up. but the space they occupy in your brain or your heart is still full.

on this visit, i am seeing old friends and going to a wedding and hitting a full 8 different itinerary items in 3.5 days and still trying to be mindful of the recurring lesson that i need to make time for myself in order to be able to be present at any of them, especially when my battery is so empty; that giving up load-bearing rest doesn't really mean gaining much enduring in return; that if the thing you give up is your limits, then there's no one left to show up.

but also, that means: i've chosen to see some people over others. some friendships are watered and some lie fallow. every step creates another fork in the road. this is something you learn to accept, and often do without thinking, because to do otherwise is to be motionless. but i still think of the ones i don't make room for. they still make room in my mind, and that is a small but manifold tragedy of life.

there is a finite number of times i will see anyone, and in truth, that has always been so, but to number them is to watch the counter tick down, and to wilfully increment other counters down to give these ones more time, and so on.

anyway that's on the vagaries of friendship and knowing more people than you have time to love in a way that grows, because intent and desire are infinite but time and space in the shape of a human body are not, and love both gives and takes. and that's on being on tumblr when i haven't eaten or drank anything yet today WHOOPS

[celira]

My only piece of advice to girls and young women is that you have to become financially independent no matter what it takes. Do whatever you need to do to become financially independent in this world and don’t ever let it go for anybody.

[celira]

distressing things to say to your friends

[celira]

my number one woman behavior is saying i’m fine with any pronouns and silently ranking people in my regard based on what they do with that information

[celira]

propaganda i'm not falling for:

dubai chocolate

proteine-obssessed diet

$500 concerts tickets

labubu

disney live action remakes

pickleball

tom cruise and brad pitt redemption arcs

[celira]

best m/f dynamic is a flamboyant bisexual show-off desperately in love with an extremely practical girl who’s difficult to impress 🤩

[celira]

earthquakes are like the one natural disaster that isn’t being directly exacerbated by global warming. that shit is here for the love of the game and the love of the game only.

[celira]

Sucks to see someone else living your dream.

[celira]

The 2025 Gender Census is now open!

[ Link to survey ]

The 12th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 30th August 2025.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

[celira]

everything, everywhere, all at once