notaiden

[notaiden]

The very beginnings of the site are up and all the various domains I bought up should redirect here. I've got about the first page or so of most recent posts up, but it's going to be an ongoing project.

Fair warning: I have another project with a June 30th deadline that's going to take precedence so it'll be a bit before I've transferred over everything that exists on Web Archive.

[notaiden]

Right. So. Added complication.

Being all of a week and a half late for renewing the domain after my grace period, NotAnotherAiden.com has now been bought up by someone else. That someone else has graciously put up the Wayback version of the site for y'all to browse but, uh, I ain't paying them the $200 minimum bid to get a domain I never made money off of.

So. I have registered NotAnotherAiden2.com and NotAnotherAidenRedux.com, as well as NotAnotherAiden.blog, NotAnotherAiden.gay, NotAnotherAiden.life, NotAnotherAiden.net, NotAnotherAiden.tips, and NotAnotherAiden.info for less than a quarter of that $200 minimum bid. I'll look at hosting over the weekend and see about getting the site up at least partially next week.

And to whoever bought the domain: Joke's on you. I think the highest number of unique hits that site ever got was in the 1500 a month realm, and that was when I was posting regularly.

Hey there man, looks like your main site is down again. Could you please bring it back up? Thanks so much for having it here as a resource all these years, I still go back and re-read stuff on occasion, and refer people to it.

Right. So. My life went just a teensy bit crazy...umm...like six months ago, but really starting early last year. It is just now starting to feel somewhat normal. (Where "normal" here means "actively planning to emigrate" so, like, that gives you an idea of how insane things were before.) In that time, my hosting was due. It completely slipped past me because my mind was on other things.

Unfortunately, this means that it's gone. I think I might, maybe, have a backup an old laptop, but I can't be sure. If not, I'll have to go with what Wayback has archived, which I haven't really looked at and which will be a much longer process.

All of which is to say that...I don't know how much I can get back up. I'm hopeful that I can at least recreate the most informative posts, but a lot of the day to day blogging stuff I'm not sure I even remember let alone feel enough the same way to rewrite.

If there's anything in particular you or others found especially helpful, I'll see what I can do about recreating it if I don't have a backup.

[notaiden]

Hey there man, looks like your main site is down again. Could you please bring it back up? Thanks so much for having it here as a resource all these years, I still go back and re-read stuff on occasion, and refer people to it.

Right. So. My life went just a teensy bit crazy...umm...like six months ago, but really starting early last year. It is just now starting to feel somewhat normal. (Where "normal" here means "actively planning to emigrate" so, like, that gives you an idea of how insane things were before.) In that time, my hosting was due. It completely slipped past me because my mind was on other things.

Unfortunately, this means that it's gone. I think I might, maybe, have a backup an old laptop, but I can't be sure. If not, I'll have to go with what Wayback has archived, which I haven't really looked at and which will be a much longer process.

All of which is to say that...I don't know how much I can get back up. I'm hopeful that I can at least recreate the most informative posts, but a lot of the day to day blogging stuff I'm not sure I even remember let alone feel enough the same way to rewrite.

If there's anything in particular you or others found especially helpful, I'll see what I can do about recreating it if I don't have a backup.

[notaiden]

Just an fyi that your domain hosting seems to have expired again for notanotheraiden. Is there any way that I can donate to you to keep it up? It's been very useful to me, and I still sometimes reference it. Thanks very much for everything.

That's very kind, but it's not a finances issue, just an ADHD one. It's back up now

[notaiden]

Hello, I was wondering if you were still a SD handler. I'm a FTM former handler myself, but opted to stop public access after I started transitioning because I just couldn't take the attention any more, and people conflating my assistive device for my personality/identity. I tried to comment on your blog post but I don't think it went through. I hope you and your dog(s) are doing well and I'd love to shoot you a message if you still use this blog.

I'm not, actually. I had some trouble trying to train a new SD when it started getting close to time for me to retire my original one and decided to just see if I was ready/able to go without. That's worked out for me for the past few years, but I had her for epilepsy and severe depression with dissociative episodes, both of which are now well-controlled enough with medication and therapy to be as close to unnoticeable as they're likely to get. It would have been a different story if either of them was still as bad as they were originally.

I wish I had better information for you. I never really had the problem of people associating having a service dog with being trans. I was pretty close to 100% stealth until quite recently. Even if I hadn't been, at its worst I was pretty visibly disabled to anyone who spent more than five minutes with me.

Feel free to toss me another message. I'm also going to check into the comment issue because I didn't get any notification so that's obviously a problem.

[notaiden]

I just wanted to thank you for your site, because I don't think I have ever before read anything by a trans man that would have resonated with me as much. As someone who can't start T for health reasons but has his name changed, is post-op, relatively stealth and passes about half of the time (if not more) reading your posts has really helped me deal with my feelings and helped me feel more confident about myself. It means me so much

Glad the site can be helpful still.  It’s been a while and every time I start to think it’s irrelevant or outdated I get another message from someone saying how much it’s helped them.  Gives me a reason to keep renewing the hosting.

[notaiden]

Alright, which of you fuckers is signing me up for hetero porn sites and dating apps?  If you’re going to be an asshole, at least get the right kind of porn!

[notaiden]

thank you so much for talking abt being trans and gay and the perception shift after you came out cause i've never seen anyone acknowledge the difficulties of being a gay trans guy before & it means a lot to know i'm not the only one with those experiences <3

Dude, the constant refusal to acknowledge the realities of being a visibly queer man in the world drives me completely mad.  Nothing in the world is simple, gender and sexuality possibly least of all.

[notaiden]

So, as anyone who has managed to stay following this blog over the years knows, I no longer post all that often.  Once a year is a pretty big deal at this point.  Part of that is because I’m well past the point in my life where I think about being trans very often.  I’m heading toward fifteen years on, I can’t remember the last time I went to a trans group, being trans is kind of just background noise.  It’s relevant, yes, but it’s not a focal point.

The other part is that I’m not entirely sure what to post.

[continued on notanotheraiden.com]

[notaiden]

I went to read your new post and found your site is down. Please fix it? :)

It’s back up, sorry about that.

[notaiden]

Sir, your main blog is down, just fyi

Yeah, I blanked on paying the bill for a couple of days.  My bad.  It’s back up now.

[notaiden]

Hello Aiden, I am just wondering, since there really little information about it, how would you call someome who was born male but wish to become transman, meaning willing to have bottom surgery to get a vagina but still being masculine and manly as he is. Thanks in advsnce flr your help...

I would most likely call them a troll trying to get me to rant at them.  And since I’m currently taking any excuse at all to procrastinate I’ll play along.

1: There are trans people who are born with penises and feel they should have vaginas.  They are called trans women or one of the various terms under the genderqueer umbrella.  They are not trans men.  That rather defeats the fucking point seeing a how a trans man is a person born with a fucking vagina and quite often would like that to not be the case.

2: Primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, gender identity, and gender expression are all different things.  I have female primary sex characteristics (a vagina), both male and female secondary sex characteristics (facial hair, boobs), a male/man gender identity, and gender expression that varies by a wide variety of factors from what country I’m currently in to how lazy I’m feeling on any particular day.  If a person with a penis happens to want a vagina that has nothing at fucking all to do with their gender expression.  Trust me, there are plenty of women out there who are way more butch than I am.

3: One does not become a trans man.  One happens to be born trans by virtue of genetics/hormones and possibly the will of God/a cruel cosmic joke/whatever the hell else your personal philosophy suggests.  It’s not like you can just wake up one day and go “hey, I think I’ll develop a lingering sense of unease with my body and/or the way the world views me”.  A person is a trans man because the world assumed they were a girl/woman and ended up being wrong.  The world doesn’t assume you’re a girl/woman?  Congratulations!  You’re not a trans man!  Trust me, I’d happily swap bodies with you.

4: There is nothing fun or trendy or ~enlightened~ about being trans.  Most of the time it’s just normal and the rest of the time it pretty well sucks.  Body dysphoria?  Blows.  Dealing with transphobia?  Blows hard.  Spending $8k to chop off body parts that make you want to off yourself?  Blows and is expensive.  Knowing that even if you had the extra $6-20k+ for lower surgery it still wouldn’t be what you wanted?  Blows blows blows.  Epic blowage.  Hell, even the smaller things like trying to find men’s clothes when you’re 5′0″ or jabbing yourself with a needle once a week to maintain your hormone levels suck.  Oh, and did I mention expensive?  Everyone figures surgery, sure, but the $160/yr I spend on T alone is roughly equivalent to what I pay for electric over the course of an entire summer.  And that’s with shots, when I tried going on gel it was closer to $480/yr.  Doesn’t seem like a ton, but that’s a 5-day Adult Park Hopper pass to Disney World.  Six days if you buy online instead of at the gate.  If I wasn’t trans I could ride Star Tours more often.

Look, if you have dysphoria and feel your body should have a vagina instead of a penis that’s fine.  There is nothing wrong with that.  But being a trans man has fuck all to do with being a “manly and masculine” person with a vagina.  And I suspect you know that because you chose to send this question to a person whose entire bloody blog is about being a trans man who is neither manly nor masculine.

[notaiden]

Our good friend Brice just came out with a book based on his research on Lou Sullivan. If you’re interested in trans history, this would be a good book to check out! 

*Edit* I realize the picture is tiny. Here’s a link to the book on Amazon.

[notaiden]

Thank you for putting the site back up! <3 Honestly it's so, so helpful.

No worries.  It wouldn’t have gone down at all, but payment time was right as I was studying for finals so I completely blanked.

[notaiden]

I never thought I’d have to do this, but apparently some people think they can support me and white supremacists at the same time.  Well, you can’t.  Not because I say so.  Not because I think white supremacists are abhorrent.  Because I am a gay, trans, Mexican Jew.  My grandmother was an undocumented immigrant who worked as a coyote to make ends meet and only gained citizenship due to the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act.  I am everything white supremacists hate.  I am amongst the first people likely to be rounded up in a world where white supremacists rule.

So even if you agree with my complete lack of patience for the overall trans community, even if you identify more as transsexual than transgender the way I do, even if you agree with literally every single thing I say, you still cannot support both me and white supremacy.   Because the ultimate goal of white supremacy is for me and people like me to be dead.

[notaiden]

Your main site has a note on it saying "Account suspended. If you are the account owner please submit a ticket to our support team." I dunno how long it's been there but I noticed when I went there today to reread some stuff.

Yes, fuck. I got caught up in exams and completely blanked on paying the account. It's done now, site should be back up within a few hours.