bealittleimprobable

[bealittleimprobable]

And when you tell the doctor the side effects are far worse than the thing it's (not actually) treating, they'll insist you just don't want to get better and mark you as non-compliant.

medicine effects: you might feel a little better :)

medicine side effects: impending death will be the most powerful occupant of your mind, your wretched organs will beg for mercy, and your brittle bones will crumble out from under you.

[bealittleimprobable]

Perception

We've already talked about my firm stance Joe and Nicky are not "less gay" in the second film. But I keep seeing "They're so much more bro-ish and it's out of character" and I keep thinking of our intro to them.

We see them both hugging Andy, which +1 for emotion and physical contact. But they then immediately get into the baklava bet. There is whistling, there is hooting, there is hollering. And I'm not saying women can't bet but I definitely think of "betting on nonsense for no reason" as a laddish trait.

And then you have things like the "What time in Malta? [Nicky just smiles] Ohhh, *that* time in Malta" and fandom deciding based on expression and tone that the reference is pure filth.

(I had thought we saw Joe and Booker watching football, but that musst have been a deleted scene or fanon or something because I can't find that now, so disregard.) Been corrected, thank you jazzpepper and yurarcher - in their downtime, Joe and Booker are hanging out watching football. Again, not exclusive to men, but stereotypes. (Nicky reading in the background, which is more neutral.)

So while they were less exuberant in the first film, I'm pretty comfy with the line from there to here.

[bealittleimprobable]

For once, I did ask a question! I asked for help with a plant thing. And immediately got "Well did you look up and see if those plants work that way?"

No, I'm a fucking idiot who just pulled the idea out of thin air, I have never read a book or googled anything in my life.

For fuck's sake. Do me the courtesy of not stumbling in as a complete stranger and assuming I'm braindead.

It's the heat, I hate everyone.

Grumbling here so I don't start replying to people on my work socials with "And what part of that statement did you think was a question? Was there some special question mark written in female-only ink? Did someone put up an advert "uninformed woman needed, please bring useless opinions and a lack of experience"?"

It's fascinating how many will complain about mansplaining... then elbow straight into a conversation they weren't part of, that didn't involve any questions, to explain why you obviously haven't heard of their (useless, obvious, already tried and discarded) solution.

(I'm aware, it's the standard way ABs treat disabled people, it's just funny when you look at the context.)

[bealittleimprobable]

Trying to explain even one ounce of class/caste/ethnic/religious dynamics in South Asia to somebody completely removed from it is so humbling like sometimes I forget how cartoonishly insane all of it is. The racism factory that churns out new types of racisms

[bealittleimprobable]

So here's what happened on Reddit:

A transmasc posted about how transmascs and trans men are often invisible, how our issues are dismissed, and how resources, especially medical ones, are almost always written with non transmascs in mind. They posted this both to r/Trans and r/lgbt.

A moderator of r/Trans responded by telling them to “stop bitching.” That’s the word they used. That’s the level of respect trans men get. Transandrophobic by the way, don't call trans men bitches.

The comment was deleted, quietly, after backlash. Then the entire post was removed. When asked why, a mod responded that the post was “playing oppression olympics,” and took the time to go through and dismiss each of the original poster’s points, including saying that trans men being sexually assaulted isn’t “unique to transmascs” and therefore not an issue, and claiming that access to testosterone isn’t any more restricted than access to estrogen, which is a straight-up lie, because T is a tightly controlled substance in most places and E is not.

The original poster was banned for three days.

Then a separate mod made a post saying, “nobody asked us our side of the story,” which is wild because people absolutely did, publicly and repeatedly. Users also started reporting that they’d had supportive comments removed or had been banned after disagreeing with the mods, some of those claims are still unconfirmed, but given the general behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising.

Then r/Trans locked down entirely. No new posts. The conversation was forcibly ended.

Some people posted about it on r/FTM, many of those posts were mass-reported, automatically removed by Reddit’s automod, or quietly buried. Meanwhile, r/lgbt also removed the original post, with no explanation.

One of the r/Trans mods eventually posted an “apology,” which was really just a soft-scrubbed PR post full of noncommittal language and distancing. They said they didn’t mean to call a trans man “a bitch,” they just used it synonymously with “complaining,” and they didn’t think about the implications until later even though the first post was about microaggressions just like the mod committed. They did not apologize for anything else, not for wrongfully banning people, not for accusing a transmasc venting like any other user of playing oppression olympics, nothing at all. They said they’re on break and can’t do anything about it. They said, and I quote, “please don’t be mad at the rest of the team.” even though the rest of the team are just as culpable for not stopping their behavior.

They also added that trans men are “a welcome part of the community” and tried to point at moderation history as proof. Because apparently we should be grateful that people occasionally get banned, every so often, for implying trans men aren't oppressed at all, wow, thanks, that is like below the bare minimum, cool.

The current state of things is: r/Trans has over 600,000 members, and trans men and transmascs were silenced, banned, and told to shut up for bringing up their own oppression. And the subreddit is locked down. There’s a mass exodus happening to the new sub, r/trans4every1, but let’s be real, the damage has already been done.

Now let’s talk about what this actually means.

This is not “just more Tumblr discourse.” This isn’t some random blog saying they don’t like transmascs. This isn’t a Twitter reply guy. This isn’t a niche zine or a spicy personal take. This is a massive trans-focused subreddit with over half a million users. It's easily one of the largest public facing trans community online, maybe even the largest, I've certainly never found a bigger one myself. And the moderation team made it crystal clear: they do not want transmascs to feel safe or welcome there.

This is what transandrophobia looks like on a slightly larger internet scale. When it’s in the hands of people who get to decide who gets heard and who gets deleted.

And for anyone who’s still stuck on “well they apologized” listen: trans men are told all the time that we’re being too loud, too angry, too entitled, too manly, too feminine, too confusing, too “binary,” too "Nonbinary", too much. We’re told that we’re “oppression olympics-ing” just for talking about our lives. And now we're getting banned and locked out of the spaces that claim to represent a huge portion of online trans people.

This isn't just online drama. This is a bellwether. And if it isn’t setting off alarms in your head, it should be.

The way transandrophobia manifests in online spaces absolutely bleeds into real life, into medical gatekeeping, into poor data collection, into the erasure of sexual violence against transmascs, into advocacy groups that write us out of the picture, into educational materials that treat us like footnotes, if they include us at all.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “well it’s not that deep,” you’re part of the problem.

We need to start being more honest about this: Transandrophobia is real, it is widespread, and it is growing. We need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt when they’ve shown us they don’t want us in the room.

And frankly?

We need to start making TRFs [Trans Radfems & transmasc-exclusionary feminists alike] deeply uncomfortable being open about their beliefs. We need to make them afraid to be TRFs, the way they’re trying to make us afraid to exist.

The same way we don’t coddle fascists. The same way we don’t tolerate TERFs. We need to stop tiptoeing around transandrophobia.

Because this growing wave of transandrophobia is going to kill people. Full stop.

Protect trans men. Protect transmascs. Protect your siblings; all of them!

[bealittleimprobable]

Depends on the character - nothing to do with reality/safety, everything to do with whether I think that character would do that or not.

*Full Question: Smut readers: does it bother you when the characters partake in BDSM during their FIRST time having sex together WITHOUT having a conversation about boundaries or safe words beforehand?

[bealittleimprobable]

PAPA V PERPETUA FOR ROLLING STONE UK

[bealittleimprobable]

The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.

[bealittleimprobable]

“Athough written many years ago, Lady Chatterley’s Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-by-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion this book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping.”

- Ed Zern providing probably the greatest review of Lady Chatterley ever written (Field & Stream magazine, 1959).

[bealittleimprobable]

OK, but... when? How many decades do you have to give it before you're just wasting everyone's time?

[bealittleimprobable]

I think asking an oppressed demographic to prove they're not bad is, in fact, still an act of contributing to their oppression.

[bealittleimprobable]

Genies can only grant wishes that are things that an ordinary person could do, just better and faster. The jinn are the creations of a divine being, and so they are part of the divine plan and cannot defy the natural order of things; a wish granted by a jinni can’t turn the day into night or the sea into yogurt, but if you wish for a temple to be built, a jinni will build it by hand, the way men do, and have it done in a day.

If you need a wish granted that defies the natural order you gotta catch a leprechaun, because no god was involved in their creation whatsoever. They just kinda showed up one day in the nineteenth century. The Aos Sí have no idea what their deal is

[bealittleimprobable]

Also... you're not that clever. This isn't stories of dealing with ~the fae~ and you are not the trickster at the crossroads. Most of you can't even lie to your mums with a straight face, and yet I'm seeing these complex webs of "Well technically...".

As above, just shut up. Shush. Stop talking. Say no more.

I saw a post going around a while ago (including from a non-US moot) about getting comfortable lying to law enforcement

Here's the thing. In the US.

DO NOT TALK TO LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

If you are in a situation where you're lying to law enforcement, you are already interacting too much. STOP TALKING.

You can ask if you are free to go. You can keep asking.

Per the National Lawyers Guild, ESPECIALLY do not lie to the FBI. Do not say things to them that could be construed as lying. Those are serious charges. The best way around that is NOT TALKING.

In the words of the National Lawyers Guild: SHUT THE FUCK UP.

[bealittleimprobable]

I Am Bad Representation

And I could not care less.

This post also on my website for easy sharing.

Yesterday, I went to my GP and got my testosterone injection administered. It’s an intramuscular injection generally administered to my backside, where the fattier, softer flesh makes the intramuscular penetration of the needle less painful, and also gives it space to settle in the flesh and slowly be assimilated into my endocrine system over time.

Every 12 weeks — 3 months — I get this injection administered. I have been on it for about five years. 

Prior to that, I was on Testogel, a topical form of testosterone where you slather a very strong-smelling slime over your shoulders every day and sit uncomfortably, waiting for it to dry, before you can put your shirt on, and trying not to sweat in the meantime. 

The nurse at my local GP has been administering this T-shot for about a year. 

Previously, I had been prescribed an oestrogen cream to help with the symptoms of vaginal atrophy — when you have a vulva and vagina and you, for whatever reason, have low oestrogen and progesterone, the mucous membranes that make up the inside of your vagina and your labia minora become thinner and produce less lubricant. It can make it harder to produce enough lubricant whilst having sex, make you more prone to tearing, and contribute to muscular pain and discomfort. 

As you might have surmised from how I described the Testogel, this cream was Bad for me. It was very texturally unpleasant and awkward to administer with a little syringe, and I despised it. 

So I made a mistake. I said, hey, can you guys give me a suppository version of the same cream?

The receptionist seemed surprised by how comfortable I was talking about my vagina in the waiting room, but hey. Such is life. 

I receive a phone call the following morning at a few minutes past nine. With delight, the receptionist informs me, “We’ve made a referral to the gender dysphoria clinic for you!”

And I say, “Well, you shouldn’t have done that. Why did you do that?”

And she goes, “Oh.”

“I don’t need to speak to a gender dysphoria specialist. This is for a vaginal suppository. It’s the same thing you’d give to a cisgender woman experiencing vaginal atrophy after experiencing menopause — it has nothing to do with being transgender.”

“Oh. Well. Erm. The doctor just doesn’t feel comfortable prescribing you hormones without you talking to a specialist.”

“What about the hormones you already give me?”

“… What?”

“I was literally there yesterday getting my T-shot administered. You’ve been giving me my testosterone for a year. Is the doctor suddenly going to take me off a medication I’ve been on for eight years? Is he comfortable putting me at severe health risk for no reason?”

“Oh, er, well, I’m sure, um, I don’t — I’m just a secretary, I don’t, um, I don’t know about… I’m sure he wouldn’t… But I can’t guarantee that — “

I was pissed. I made it very clear I was pissed and that I felt this was a waste of time and resources.

I know exactly what happened. Because many doctors don’t actually know anything about much of the medicine they administer unless it comes up on a Google search, they immediately react to base assumptions like “transgender” (or “woman” or “disabled” or “Black”) and attribute any issue you’re having to that. 

My doctor looked at the fact that I’m on testosterone, then saw that I’d asked for oestrogen. Aaaaah!!! That’s so confusing and weird! I must be confused about my gender identity! You can’t just mess with all this stuff and brew it all together!

The fact that I’ve been given a cream-form of the same medication in the past is irrelevant. The fact that what I’ve requested is a LOCALISED form of HRT, which will not impact my broader endocrine system, is irrelevant — he doesn’t know that. The fact that again, the same exact thing can be given to cisgender women, is irrelevant. 

He doesn’t know how any of these medications work. Hormones + transgender = ooh scary!!!!

When you have any sort of chronic health condition — which my transgenderism will be until someone makes an implant for my T — you end up having to learn how a lot of these medications work and how they work together. You have to actually pay attention.

And then you have to manage healthcare practitioners who are acting based on bias and assumptions rather than actual healthcare comprehension. 

And then, infuriatingly, after all this, I was put in the position of having to say, “Look, I’m sorry, I know you don’t know anything about this, and I’m very clearly aggravated, but it feels like I’m being targeted for poor medical care simply because I am transgender, and that my health is being put at risk at random.”

Which is what’s happening. 

But when your doctor tries to do malpractice on you because he’s anxious about the fact that you’re transgender, you’re not allowed to get angry and upset about it, because that makes you scary and intimidating and a Bad Patient. It might make you worthy of even more punishment, or being struck off. 

So that ruined my day. 

I now have to go to the endocrinologist, and hopefully, I’ll be able to say, “I’ve literally been on T for eight years. Do not fuck with me. I do not need a fucking assessment. I do not need to prove for a second time to some stranger that I’m transgender. Just give me the suppository to make my dick work better and fuck off.”

And the endo will just give me the suppository, and my doctor will go back to giving my testosterone every three months, and I won’t have to ruin anybody’s life or publicly embarrass my GP surgery into treating me like a human being. 

It’s so frustrating to have to constantly think about what damage control I’m going to have to do to just be given the basic medication I require to live my life and that I’ve already been on for the better part of a decade. 

The thing about the fact that it feels like this whole thing has put my general life at risk is that it feels like a punishment for caring about my vaginal health and wanting to be able to have comfortable, good sex — and that makes me a bad transgender person.

Cis people don’t want to think about trans men having sex or being sexual beings. That’s gross and scary and weird and uncomfortable. 

Doctors don’t want a patient advocating for their own sexual health or being empowered and knowledgeable about the ins and outs of their own healthcare, let alone contradicting them just because they very clearly not only don’t know how my healthcare works, but because they can’t be bothered to learn. 

Cis people don’t really want trans people to exist, because the concept of trans people disrupts the things they would like to believe about “biological sex” and how it contributes to the roles they choose for each other and pressure one another into.

If they’re okay with trans people existing, they only want trans people to exist in perfect theory. 

They “grieve” over the cisgender children they “lose” when they transition to their correct gender. They don’t want kids and teenagers to be given puberty blockers, but they also don’t want them to get the right hormones — and now even as an adult, I’m constantly put in the position of having to be worried about my T getting stopped at any moment in case a doctor has Feelings about having a transgender patient. 

Because it’s too scary and too hard to actually do any research about my medication. They want our healthcare to go to nebulous “specialists” who, frankly, know more about diabetes and menopause — which is what most endocrinologists study! — than they do about being trans.

Cisgender people are often very fixated on the idea and the narrative that transgender people live in fear and anxiety and self-loathing because we’re so cursed by our bodies and our lives.

But almost every negative experience I have is to do with a cisgender person choosing to make my life difficult rather than any internal issue I have with my actual life or body or gender. It’s cis people using slurs or making places inaccessible, refusing to learn or be educated on any subject, and trying to push any kind of transgender person out of their lives, their facilities, their society.

And so yeah, I’m bad representation.

I’m openly gay and fruity, and I wear sexy fun clothes, and I write erotica and I talk openly about sexual health and resources, and I’m open about being transgender. I’m not ashamed of my sexuality or my gender — or my disability and chronic illness, which I’m also open about, God forbid!

And who cares?

I could be the absolute perfect example of transgenderism — invisible, meek, silent — and I would be treated with the exact same level of disrespect and ignorance. I would just feel like it was genuinely my fault for existing instead of theirs for treating me poorly. 

At the very least I can complain loudly where other people can see and hear me, and it can make other trans people feel better about advocating for themselves and telling cis people and cis-focused systems to fuck right off. 

And I can create bad representation proudly in my own fiction work — trans people who are criminals and assholes and sluts and freaks and actual monsters, who are off-putting and autistic and disabled and weird — and let people enjoy that as well. 

[bealittleimprobable]

It's the heat, I hate everyone.

Grumbling here so I don't start replying to people on my work socials with "And what part of that statement did you think was a question? Was there some special question mark written in female-only ink? Did someone put up an advert "uninformed woman needed, please bring useless opinions and a lack of experience"?"

It's fascinating how many will complain about mansplaining... then elbow straight into a conversation they weren't part of, that didn't involve any questions, to explain why you obviously haven't heard of their (useless, obvious, already tried and discarded) solution.

(I'm aware, it's the standard way ABs treat disabled people, it's just funny when you look at the context.)

[bealittleimprobable]

I used to work near a shop that did the most amazing breakfast sandwiches - sausages, bacon, fried egg - and came wrapped in a giant sheet of white paper. You had to deploy the paper less like a napkin and more like a shield.

It was worth it though.

(Just looked on maps, it's still there. Tiny, tiny little shop, half the queue was on the street, probably paying 50p in rent. Glad they're still going!)

The thing they don't tell you about fried egg runny yolk is that if you put it in a sandwich it will be the best most delicious thing and you can mop up the egg with the bread, but in exchange you Will get so so messy and covered in egg yolk

[bealittleimprobable]

unpopular opinion: Vimes is kind of drama queen