dadfashion

[dadfashion]

cw: brief mentions of suicidal ideation, drug and alcohol addiction, and general oversharing. lol i have no idea how yall do these anymore

hey. no idea if anyone will read this but sometimes u just need to put things out into the universe and maybe someone will see it you know. also i will say im in a particularly fragile mental state atm - have not slept in maybe 40 hours - that probably is part of the reason i’m about to spill my guts out here, haha. have not used this blog in years, not even sure when i made it honestly, all i know is i was in such a radically different place in life than i am today. not to say i don’t stand by anything i may have said lol because the vast majority of those feelings and experiences are still here today. but i have existed in the world a little bit longer now and definitely navigate them a little differently and in a more authentic way than i was able to in the past, which is great.

idk im not really trying to talk about my gender right now im just trying to take stock of things as i enter month 6, 7 etc of quarantine. past year or two of my life has easily been the hardest thus far even before the pandemic, tbh even considering my 2015 s*ic*de attempts. lots of mental issues gone untreated for way too long u know. got diagnosed w some real fucked up adhd maybe 2 years ago, eventually had to drop out of school for a year- this is my first semester back lol this time at a much cheaper school. no idea when i’ll graduate. i got a lot of debt already. it was dumb. i live in a “leftist” cooperative house with 22 other people, mostly students. i say leftist very loosely because the vast majority of these people do not come close to holding any sort of true anti imperialist principles, and many are actively anti-communist lmao. don’t worry im not really here to talk about my politics either.

idk. im at kind of a turning point where i decide to get my shit together or not- i’ll be transferring to a new school with a new major after my initial crash and burn. i got a job i like pretty well even if its waiting tables during the global pandemic. making enough money to pay rent And have a little savings account w that and the unemployment i received combined. lol unemployment changed my life actually bc i literally am financially stable for the first time ever in my life so at least theres that.

im addicted to alcohol, w**d, and nicotine. im in the middle of a terrible e*ting d*sorder relapse. have not seen anyone other than those i live and work with since maybe april. i am deeply deeply depressed, lonely, and insecure still, even before the adhd on top of that. i feel constantly like i’m somehow on the brink of snapping and going truly “insane” for real, whatever the hell that means as if im not insane already. my mental health is in fucking shambles lol but to be fair i genuinely am very impressed at how much worse it could be but isn’t. at least im not actively suicidal and haven’t been in a hot minute. at least i have access to medication and a fucking therapist now dude. there are some things that bring me joy but i worry they won’t be enough for me to survive whatever comes next.

idk. im not gonna go back and read my older posts on here but i’d probably be a little embarrassed by them, much like im sure i will be of this one soon. not sure what im going to do or where anything goes from here. whole country and government is collapsing around me as i speak so. thanks for reading this if for some reason u came across this. hope ur doing well.

[dadfashion]

[dadfashion]

this is hands down one of the best things ive ever written

[dadfashion]

monument valley - 2015

[dadfashion]

me age 14 questioning my sexuality: i think i might be a lesbian…..

everyone immediately:

[dadfashion]

talking about detransitioned women

i love the perspective i’ve gained from gender critical feminists and radical feminists–in fact, i owe a great deal to it and to this group of women. but it is often difficult to engage in the discussions around trans people, especially when the topic of ‘trans regret’ comes up, or detransition in general.

‘trans regret’ is a real thing, but for many of us, transitioning was the best we could do at the time with the options we were presented. i don’t regret transition, because in many ways, it led me here. i’m still me, i’m happy, i’m healthy. i even like the way my body looks–the masculine parts, the feminine parts. i touch my body and it responds in kind–that feels beautiful. i make love with this body, lesbian love, and that feels beautiful.

i think that’s why it’s so difficult to read pretty judgemental things about detransitioned women’s bodies. words like “maimed” or “deformed” or “ruined” or “wrecked” are so hurtful. i can respect that some detransitioned women may feel this way about their bodies, but i don’t think it’s okay to use such loaded, emotionally heavy words about detransitioned women’s bodies if you’re not one yourself.

i know i don’t personally feel ruined; my body isn’t deformed or maimed. it is strong and lovely. it is healthy. it moves me about this world. it loves and receives love. it can be difficult to love my body 100% all the time, but for whom is that not the case? maybe a lucky few–and i mean among all women, not just detransitioned women.

society is always sending signals about how women’s bodies are lacking, should be tailored or styled, how they could be better, more attractive, etc. i don’t think it’s helpful or particularly kind for women who aren’t themselves detransitioned to speak that way about our bodies. loving oneself in spite of all the messages that tell us not to is hard enough, please don’t add your voice to that.

[dadfashion]

Lyle Ashton Harris’ Once (Now) Again exhibition (photographs from 1986–2000).

[dadfashion]

sheer [insta / patreon / etsy]

[dadfashion]

female experiences:

being told it’s normal if your clothes hurts you and you have to endure it

being told it’s normal if sex hurts you and you have to endure it

not finding basic information about your biology and sexual organs through most of your life

being told that pain is a normal part of your life

being told that if you are a “good girl” you’ll endure it without complaint

being told you should be grateful for the rights you have and finding out in the past you wouldn’t even have these rights

getting brutally shut down if you try to stand up for yourself

getting forced into a role of serving men because “it’s woman’s job”

having your labor dismissed as worthless and stupid 

but you have to keep doing it anyway or you’ll get punished

anything you do is considered worth less and generally dismissed

realizing men’s work is praised and glorified even when they do harmful and environmentally destructive work for selfish purposes

realizing you can’t do anything about it and feeling less worthy even when you do more work and more necessary and useful work

having your compassion used against you

having your energy and emotional labor used by men who demand you to listen to them and comfort them and stroke their ego

being laughed at and invalidated and called slurs and insults when you try to talk about your own problems

being called selfish, dramatic, crazy, delusional and damaged when you expect basic decency and compassion

being treated like you’re insane and hysteric if you display any kind of anger at how badly you’re being treated

feeling infuriated at double standards and for how harshly you’re judged and punished while men can get away with anything

doubting your own senses and considering if you really are crazy

being ignored as a human being, your intelligence dismissed, only thing that seems to have any worth is your body but you get shamed, objectified, sexualized, used, violated, predated on and hurt 

hating your body and wishing it was a different body, one that nobody would hurt and violate

feeling completely helpless and alone

[dadfashion]

You know, I feel like a lot of the fucked up, traumatic things that happened to me when I was younger were a big part of why I had to return to womanhood.  When I transitioned, I initially intended to be pretty much stealth.  Yet, I was the opposite.  The only people who didn’t know I was trans were people I interacted with in a professional context.  I couldn’t stand being seen as a cis man, it felt so wrong to erase my past like that.

For awhile, that was good enough.  People knew where I came from.  But as the years on T went by, I changed.  I had never trusted or really liked men before I transitioned, yet after three years most of my friends were men.  I got myself into numerous dangerous, unhealthy situations on account of having surrounded myself by men.  I found I couldn’t connect with women anymore like I used to.  It felt lonely.  It’s like I woke up one day and realized I wasn’t myself anymore.  When I was a minor, I only met 4 guys who I didn’t think were sexist, who I actually liked, and they were all raised without fathers by kind, loving mothers.  Yet here I was, men all around me, no idea how I got there.  I’d lost my past somewhere along the way.

I find it interesting when people say not being raised as a boy left them unsuited to living as a man.  I fit in well enough.  I was loud, abrasive, argumentative, not afraid to get my hands dirty or to be in a fight.  People found it easy to ignore I was trans.  I honestly think a lot of people forgot.

I moved to an environment where I worked with all men on a small farm.  The things they said about women appalled me, turned my stomach.  I used to get into fights with them about the shit they’d say.  I was in the middle of nowhere, the nearest endo probably a 5 hour drive.  I reached the end of my vial, and knew that was it.  I’ll never forget my first period.  We were driving to a farmer’s market while they were talking about how irrational women on their periods were.  I didn’t want to be like them.  I was, in some ways though. The sexism I had seen creeping up inside of me over the years felt like poison inside of my veins.  Where had I gone?  I didn’t see any way to get myself back other than to quit hormones.

It took me a long time to feel connected to women again, like a year and a half off of T before it didn’t feel like a total lie.  Then, I met women like me.  I’d always been rejected from girlhood, from womanhood.  Before I did anything to change my body, I was harassed out of bathrooms.  I wasn’t invited to sleep-overs at parties.  I was treated with disgust and hatred.  Where was the room for me to be a girl growing into a woman?  I couldn’t find it.  Meeting older lesbians was a revelation.  I was like them, and they were women.  They didn’t fit into mainstream straight culture any more than I did, but they’d had rich, full lives as women anyway.  I wanted that.  I wanted to feel like I belonged among other women.  

I still feel like I’m not really where I’d like to be in that regard.  I often feel like I’m on the outside looking in when I’m around other women.  Not all the time, but often enough.  I find it much easier to connect with butches than other kinds of women.  It’s hard for me to feel like a woman among women, I often feel very different.  It can make it hard for me to talk about my transition, like if I don’t bring it up, I can pretend that we all have the same histories and I didn’t shave my beard earlier.  I know I feel a lot of compassion for women who felt so alienated from themselves that they found transition the only solution, and I know I don’t want anyone in my life who feels I’m a traitor to women or anything like that.  Finding acceptance for myself and my past is a slow process, but that’s okay most of the time.  Life happens one day at a time, and that’s how I’ve got to live it.  Meaningful change is slow, and I can’t recover from almost a decade of dissociating myself from my sex overnight.  I’m getting there.

[dadfashion]

“I’m happier being detransitioned, but saying that people detransition because they’re “not happy” with transition is disingenuous. The truth is that a lot of women don’t feel like they have options. There isn’t a whole lot of place in society for women who look like this, women who don’t fit, who don’t comply. When you go to a therapist and tell them you have those kinds of feelings, they don’t tell you that it’s okay to be butch, to be gender nonconforming, to not like men, to not like the way men treat you. They don’t tell you there are other women who feel like they don’t belong, that they don’t feel like they know how to be women. They don’t tell you any of that. They tell you about testosterone.”

— Cari Stella, @guideonragingstars, Response to Julia Serano: Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation

[dadfashion]

it’s time 2 quit being sedentary. If you are physically able, go outside. Not in a “go outside you strange internet hermit way” but just a “go walk down the street and be present in your own neighborhood” type way. Just noticing the seasons changing and paying attention to people and houses and street signs and critters is very very good for mental health and shakes off that dissociation, depersonalization feeling.

[dadfashion]

also it just makes me furious that even from age 14, around the time I came out to my family as a lesbian, cut my hair off, and started shopping in the men's section, that despite how supportive my family and doctors seemed to be i always felt pushed to transition. people would really rather care for a child/adolescent who looks like a man than a gnc lesbian, and that's a big reason why I began to take testosterone- not having met other gnc lesbians I felt like transition was the only way I could ever be comfortable with myself, the only way I would ever be able to take up space. i never realized until much later that we are able to do the exact same things, that we're even able to experience love as lesbians, as butches, as gnc females.

[dadfashion]

back here to say that detransition can feel so isolating, at least for me. i want to date, want to feel comfortable having sex, but when women hit on me, even if it's in the way that only lesbians can hit on a butch, i'm just terrified because I don't know what gender they think I am because I'm too afraid to talk about it, worried about misunderstandings of my identity. I don't know what they make of my stubbly 2 days old facial hair, the key ring on my belt loop, my visible breasts free of a bra or binder (one thing that I did not expect going off T- my breasts have absolutely gotten larger in the past 6 months or so, and I don't know how to feel about it) I wish I could be open about both my past identification as a trans man, my transition through hormones, and my reidentification as a lesbian, but I still don't know how.

[dadfashion]

“It is always appropriate to ask for love, but to ask any other adult (including our parents in the present) to meet our primal needs is unfair and unrealistic. Most of us emerge from childhood with conscious and unconscious primal wounds and emotional unfinished business. What we leave incomplete we are doomed to repeat. The untreated traumas of childhood become the frustrating dramas of adulthood. Our fantasy of the “perfect partner,” or our disappointments in a relationship we do not change or leave, or the dramas that keep arising in our relationships reveal our unique unmet primal wounds and needs. We try so hard to get from others what once we missed. What was missed can never be made up for, only mourned and let go of. Only then are we able to relate to adults as adults.”

David Richo, How to Be an Adult

[dadfashion]

Gender Troubles: The Butches (watch it for free until March 29th)

[dadfashion]

“Rituals are particularly good for grounding in the feminine. Anything that the patient relates to is valuable, e.g. drawing, sculpting, clay-modelling, dancing, knitting. It enables the patient to act out the boundaries outside that she’s trying to create inside. Rituals provide containers which allow one to play within a pattern. Acting them out can be tremendously healing. I have found rituals to be of particular help to women suffering from eating disorders.”

— Jasbinder Garnermann, Rescuing the Feminine: The Problem of the Animus in Women