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My brother is a librarian, and his library is one of the ones that hosts Drag Queen Story Time.

He is also 6'3", 300 lbs of Heavy Weapons Librarian.

This week, some karen showed up to take video of said storytime. She was unmoved by the director of the library telling her their policy against taking video in the children's room.

My brother was also unmoved. Specifically, he was unmoved from his position directly in the line of karen's cellphone. She got video of an acre of blue broadcloth shirt, and that's it.

Other people who showed up to scowl at the drag queen decided they had other things to do that day when my brother scowled at them. He inherited our Mama's scowl, and it's a good one.

Sometimes, an ally looks like a big fat bald white guy. Sometimes, an ally looks like a wall.

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Watching the other site eat itself from over here is definitely a mood, but I couldn't let this exchange disappear unpreserved

Consider it my social media migration credentials

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I’ve been on T since 2013 now, and while I couldn’t sing worth a damn before OR after being on T, I am now truly enjoying my speaking and humming voice.

It sounds... warm, if that makes sense.  Relaxed, and less out of tune.  I don’t get misgendered over the phone anymore, and if I get misgendered face to face it’s because I was wearing a mask, and I hadn’t started speaking yet.

The baby I take care of sometimes likes my voice too, resting his head against my chest when I’m talking to someone, or when I hum and it sounds a little like a cat purring.  The other day I was trying to do a cat-purr for him on purpose, and figured out I could make a revving motorcycle engine noise.  He thought that game was even better. Yes, my voice went scratchy and out of tune there for a year or three at the start, but it came back smooth, and rumbly, and right.

Taking T didn't ruin my singing voice, and frankly I'm sick of folks panicking and ignoring the fact that cis boys go through two or three years where their voices are fluctuating and cracking and changing before they settle.

Your voice isn't ruined, it's changing.

If you want to make that transition easier, you gotta keep using it. Sing! Even if your voice cracks in goofy ways. Even if you have trouble placing your voice comfortably. It gets easier, I promise. Get a voice teacher (if you can) who has experience with vocal changes for pubescent cis boys if it's really making you anxious or if you're having a hard time controlling it.

To be clear, I'm not trying to be dismissive of people's emotions, nor am I trying to tell you about your own experience. If you feel something intensely, that's fair and valid. Respectfully, you should unpack that with a therapist or supportive peers.

However, when one of the main TERF tactics against transmascs is convincing trans guys that T makes you Worse in a Variety of Ways, and that you'll be ruining your body if you take it, I am EXTREMELY dubious of how many people online report any part of their body being ruined by T. Sounds suspiciously like TERF shit. And, yes, even Actual Trans People can play into TERF talking points. I'm begging y'all to stop the rampant fearmongering surrounding T.

So, after nearly a year being on T, I'm here to say that YES my voice cracks and YES my voice fluctuates and YES sometimes it feels like I have to relearn everything I knew about being a vocalist, but goddamn if I won't have fun figuring it all out, because I know this is just one stage of the transition I'm going through, and it's worth it.

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Things I will never get used to:

Women apologizing to me and letting me go first, when we reach a doorway at the same time.

The expression’s always the same, a slightly wary kind of impersonal deference, like customer service politeness.

I get why they do it.  I remember the offended expressions of men when I didn’t instinctively stand aside, years ago.  It’s survival instinct and prudence, on the part of the women who do it. If I don’t already know them personally when it happens, I can’t reassure them, or change this.  But this is gender-based servant-training, and seeing someone else offer it to me when I consider them an equal is never going to feel natural.

I don’t have much respect for men who require other people to pretend they’re not equal to him to keep him happy.

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Our Flag Means Death was first described to me as ‘a ship full of gay muppets who know they’re in a romantic comedy, plus one deeply closeted asshole who thinks he’s in Black Sails’.  It was also described to me as, ‘so much good gay’, and ‘the beginning feels like just more queerbaiting but don’t worry it’s not-’ and so on. I had my doubts. I started watching it. Holy shit they were not wrong, this is gold.

It IS like if the Sesame Street writers wrote a stageplay for adults, and the whole thing just happened to have amazing backdrops and get filmed by someone in the audience.

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Winds of Autumn/Moving update

It's technically spring now, but there is a feeling in the air sometimes, not unlike a wind when the weather begins to turn. Casually aggressive conversations overheard outdoors. The upside-down American flag and MAGA sign some guy hung in his front yard for months on end after Biden won.  His across the street neighbors have a play set for their kids out front, but I don't see them out there much. The smooth corporate shark company from New York, that bought out my old landlords and stopped taking checks in favor of an online payment system.   I lived in New Hampshire for years.  I transitioned there, learned my current profession there, and spoke at a series of hearings in Concord in favor of more trans-friendly laws.  I found friends New Hampshire. ...But between that chill wind, and the fact that my longtime boyfriend lives in Mass, I finally realized I would never buy a house there.

There is a time to stand, and a time to go.   I've felt it before, in Alaska around 2009-2010.  That sense that I was being tolerated as per the law, but everyone knew who the first one ‘off the island’ would be if things turned nasty.  I won’t go into it now, but I was right to leave then, too.

I caught that same feeling again late last year, and though I still work in NH, I now live across the border.  That's right, I'm back in Massachusetts.  When I started this blog, I had only left here a year or two before, so in a way this feels like full circle.  Not much has changed.  Saner laws than NH, longer paperwork. I wasn't born here, but it's good to be home.

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You are not obligated to donate money or reblog the posts of people you don’t know seeking money, even if they are part of your demographics.

I mean it.

You’re allowed to say ‘no’ here.  If you’re just hitting reblog out of guilt or to make them leave you alone, that’s not a reblog you need to make.

Not everyone uses their blogs for the same thing, and while some are exciting newsfeeds or car bumpers covered with art and stickers, others are personal journals, or bonsai trees.

You are allowed to tell your own story.

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Life has been interesting, but good. I’m vaccinated, and so are all my friends and close relatives. I spent a lot of time with my boyfriend. I decided I should change apartments next time my lease comes up for renewal. I got a new boss at work, who is semi-stealth nonbinary (using a masculine 'nickname��� but she/her pronouns).  Low-pressure facilitator type, I would like them even apart from having the trans thing in common. Might do a beard again this winter.