mechanicalmonarchbutterfly

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

thinking about the coming together of willful self-creators again

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

Fun fact as someone who had a lot of trouble with excess of empathy (borderline extreme emotions shout out) part of my healing required me to let go of the stress and pain I was taking on as my own, and rerouting it into compassionate behaviour.

Having empathy doesn’t make you inherently good at supporting or understanding others! It’s a social illusion to help pack bonding but it’s also an illusion. You can’t actually feel what the other person feels, you can only feel your interpretation of what they feel.

Empathy also works until it doesn’t. If you empathise with someone but then don’t have sympathy/compassion for their behaviour that can leave you feeling betrayed because now “your” emotions feel conflicting.

i've seen quite a bit of confusion about this, so let me attempt to clear things up :

empathy is the ability to feel somebody's emotions as though they are affecting you personally. for example, somebody tells you "my dog died last night!" -> you now feel as though you've lost a pet personally -> you feel grief and sadness just like the other person. not everyone has empathy. it's a trait some people develop and others don't. some have high empathy, some have low empathy, some (like me) have none.

sympathy is the ability to understand and care about somebody else's struggles, even if you don't feel them yourself. so, somebody tells you their dog died -> you realize how this affects them emotionally -> you care about this person, and are upset that they are suffering. not everyone has sympathy either! it's a scale, just like empathy.

compassion is doing something to relieve another person's suffering or make them feel better. somebody tells you their dog died -> you don't want them to remain upset -> you come up with ways to help them feel better, like offering comfort and distractions, or other forms of support. compassion is a learned trait, not something you can be born with like empathy or sympathy. anyone can learn to be compassionate, although some may struggle more with it than others; it's a skill, just like anything else.

however, none of these are required to be a good person. that's a choice you make on your own accord. i hope this clears things up!

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

We’re all fucking insane at the end of the day. Disregulated, traumatised, impulsive, prone to black and white thinking. When you glorify the victim status it’s easy to lose perspective, to lose track of your own faults, and to demonize your sisters in the name of transfeminism.

I have some pretty strict thoughts about age gaps and how to navigate them safely, but people who are obsessed with “limiting the harm” in their community through policing age gap relationships between trans lesbians better be doing the same for the dolls in relationships with cis women or (god forbid) men.

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

Power imbalances are potentially really harmful, it’s important to be aware of that. But policing your sisters relationships on that basis alone is playing right into the transmisogynistic stereotypes that trans women, especially older trans women, are overall ill intentioned and predatory.

I have some pretty strict thoughts about age gaps and how to navigate them safely, but people who are obsessed with “limiting the harm” in their community through policing age gap relationships between trans lesbians better be doing the same for the dolls in relationships with cis women or (god forbid) men.

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

I have some pretty strict thoughts about age gaps and how to navigate them safely, but people who are obsessed with “limiting the harm” in their community through policing age gap relationships between trans lesbians better be doing the same for the dolls in relationships with cis women or (god forbid) men.

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

I think it’s cool when trans people change their anatomical sexual characteristics and the more they change their anatomical sexual characteristics the better, sexier, and cooler IMO.

Trans people who don’t pursue changes to their sexe are fine, but they are at best allies to the trans people whose rights to do as they wish with their bodies are being stripped.

Thus like any other ally to a cause, it’d be best if trans people who don’t have an interest in changing their sex stop sucking the air out of every room they’re in with their concerns that they’re not being included enough in the discourse (tm).

Your brothers and (overwhelmingly) your sisters are dying. Act appropriately and respectfully in view of the stakes here.

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

the lying new york times

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

After having an autistic meltdown at work, the (cis) safety rep who took charge tried to brainstorm other career paths for me and shot out working with children.

Now I have worked with children in the past (pre transition), I love children, but in this climate even in a country that isn’t as far along (yet) in trans panic, I couldn’t help but break out laughing.

Like you think my anxiety is bad at this low stakes manual labour job? Girlie Idk how to tell you this…

the fucked up thing is that trans women basically aren't allowed around kids. at all. I don't know a single trans woman who spends almost any time with kids. which, y'know, sucks for trans women who actually like kids. I can think of plenty of adults I regularly spent time with as a kid who were the age I am now or even younger, but now that I am an adult, there are no kids in my life and maybe never will be because society is so horrifically transmisogynistic that basically every parent hears "trans woman" and thinks "pedophilic rapist" and wouldn't be caught dead letting their children interact with us

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

by 雨音

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

as a person who lost a loved one to addiction, i would rather have them be able to use safely in a sterile environment with safe equipment, where they can 100% know the drug is not laced with something deadly, and live- than them dying because they didn’t know what the drug contained, or because no one was there to make sure they weren’t ODing, or because they used dirty equipment in a dirty environment.

again more simply put, i would rather have my dead loved one continue using drugs in a safe manner and stay alive, than die the way they did because the stigma around substance use is not only dangerous, but lethal.

harm reduction saves lives.

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

"Pretransition, repressed trans woman" is so often framed as a position of "basically a man, therefore relatively privileged" and let's be clear: No. Fuck no.

What you're actually looking at there is someone who is, or has been, noticeably queer to others. She's been, or is being, subjected to queerphobic abuse mechanisms from society, and that is likely to be a significant component of why she's repressing in the first place.

Then, the denial of the fact of her identity means that she has no tools to understand why this abuse happens. She might think this is just normal stuff men should put up with, even as she is being treated worse than the actual men around her, and so put the blame on herself for failing to deal with it. She might think she's a uniquely inexplicable failure, too "straight" to be gay and too gay to be straight.

This is not a position of privilege, it's a fucking cage.

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

it's so like, stupidly obvious to me. when faced with basic feminist ideas of how women are hurt more in a misogynist society than men, we cry "oppression olympics" do discredit the basic act of analyzing who has it worse and why as being folly. just say what you mean and tell me to shut up about women

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

i know this isn’f very feminist of me and I’m sorry but sometimes I truly do just be breasting boobily down the stairs or whatever yknow

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

digitalgirl & analoguegirl

[mechanicalmonarchbutterfly]

METAL SPIKES FOR ROBOT DYKES █