shinydh

[shinydh]

Another interaction, that is notable here given the way this overlap has been weaponised by exclusionary extremists of late: autism and gender!

Some autistic people have sensory issues that make certain forms of gender expression partly or completely inaccessible to them - fabric aversion to certain clothing, scent aversion to perfume, touch sensitivity with hair and makeup as well, I'd throw dexterity issues with applying makeup into this too (proprioception is a sense!)...

For some, that might be how they find out they're trans; "my assigned-gender presentation is sensory hell" is an entirely logical source of egg cracks. For others, they may find they're cis *and also* find their assigned-gender presentation sensory hell, but are dysphoric about adopting the presentation of another gender because, well, it's not their gender. And quite a few might have conflicts beyond that, such as finding sensory and/or gender euphoria from differently-coded sources.

My partner @moonlight-fox doesn't dress for their gender or lack thereof, but for their autistic sensory issues. I married them in a navy taffeta corset and metallic blue circle skirt not because I'm not a cis man - though this was a time in my life I was having to check - but because I wanted the sensory joy of swish, squish, and shiny. (The outfit was made for me by a possibly-autistic LARP costume-making friend with the corset specifically shaped for even deep pressure rather than body-shaping.)

Sometimes, "gender nonconformity" = "my gender presentation isn't about gender at all because I have a disability override."

One of the things that drives me up the wall about the idea that we should judge a person's gender by how they look is... not everybody has the ability to achieve the kind of look that reflects their gender.

Like, mascs with CAIS can't really take testosterone to look more masc. A lot of intersex variations really hamstring traditional methods of gender transition.

Long covid has been really hard on me in so many ways. One of them is taking away so much ability to play with my gender expression. Presenting androgynously is actually a lot of work! Even as an intersex person with mixed sex characteristics! It requires so much careful work to have that exact balance of gender signals because people in our society are just *so* conditioned to round people to the nearest apparent binary gender. 🙃

I grew my hair out because I don't have the energy to get regular hair cuts. (Short hair requires. so. much. maintenance. omg.) I struggle to breathe and have pericarditis, so a binder just seems like a real bad idea.

I've felt like my gender sodality is intergender for a long time now (even before I had that language to actually articulate it). I'm starting to feel more and more like I'm also fatiguegender because of how much long covid has limited my expression.

The gender dysphoria I've been getting from being so trapped in the feminine box has made me aware in new ways that I am not really a woman. I didn't used to think of myself as somebody who had a lot of dysphoria and now it's a regular problem in my life 😭

Not assuming people's genders based on their appearance is a form of access. It enables people whose genders don't match their appearance to access spaces and conversations that would otherwise inaccessible due to dysphoria. It gives people energy to do things other than either try to correct misgenderings or suffer through it.

[shinydh]

Hey just a general PSA from someone officially diagnosed and documented:

Now is not the time to seek out an autism diagnosis.

RFK's plans have been made very clear and any diagnosis you do get will get you put on this "national disease registry" they're proposing.

Trust me when I say I completely understand the need for accommodations and a better understanding of yourself, but if you have gone this long without being diagnosed, you will be better off waiting.

Furthermore, listen to and advocate for folks who are diagnosed, especially folks with higher support needs. They'll be the first ones targeted for whatever bullshit "experimental treatments" the government tries to push.

Stay safe and look out for your neighbor.

[shinydh]

One longstanding online friend of mine is a Baseball Autistic and also enthusiastic creative writer, and indeed we met through roleplaying fantasy nations playing sports (with results generated through community-created algorithms designed for this purpose, weighted by ranking adjusted for a bonus for roleplaying quality).

While she's American and I'm British, we did meet in person once - when her family visited London, she broke off from the family schedule on the day they did the tourist trap afternoon tea (which extremely isn't representative of how at least today's actual British people eat, for any Americans who don't know this) to join me at a cricket match at historic "home of the sport" Lord's, via having an actually representative afternoon meal in a pub. It is the only large sporting crowd I've ever been in (22,664, which was about 75% full - though we were at the back of a since-redeveloped stand where it was emptier than that), and I owe it to her for getting out safely because I was overloaded then and only then. But before then I had a great time, and even took my noise-cancelling headphones off for part of the game (and this was the short-form T20 version which lasts about as long as a baseball game and draws more... Vociferous crowds than longer forms of cricket).

[shinydh]

Do me a favour and reblog this with a show you like that was cancelled after only one season. I don't mean shows that were always meant to be miniseries or shows that work perfectly well as a standalone story, or shows that might still get renewed. I mean shows that are and will forever remain unfinished. The more obscure the better.

[shinydh]

A couple of *other* additional thoughts:

While some people have disabilities that impede on their ability to travel without a car, some people have disabilities that don't affect mobility in that way but *do* prevent them from being able to drive. (It me!)

These same disabilities might also make deliveries an accessibility benefit for reasons unrelated to mobility directly, but instead on the level of "avoiding an inaccessible environment." (It also me!)

being so fr with you all we need to drastically accelerate anti-car propaganda.

we need to make it so clear to future generations that we no longer tolerate a world where you cannot conveniently go for a walk or get a coffee or get groceries without a car

[shinydh]

Those ending air quotes truly make this even better than it already was

Happy Trans Day of Visibility, everyone.

One year ago today was the opening night of my school’s production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. I was playing Charlie Brown. And if you know that musical, you know that the opening number is 5 minutes long and basically just the cast singing to Charlie Brown about what a “good man” he is.

Here’s the thing, though…I’m transmasc. The director did not know this when casting me, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t bring it up to anyone else (because I’m ✨closeted✨). So basically, last year I spent my Trans Day of Visibility getting my gender aggressively affirmed through song for five “straight” minutes, and nobody knew it but me.

And I just think that’s so fucking funny.

[shinydh]

@moonlight-fox has reblogged this already with tags telling the story of Deal or No Deal (UK) text commentaries as the first place he met his husband.

people should NOT be allowed to say they met their partner online when they used a dating site or app. if you say "we met online 🥰" i expect to hear that you got into an argument in a homestuck fanfic comment section and fell in love. that you met in a furry discord server and got married. not that you swiped on tinder until you met fucking josh who lived 3 miles away.

[shinydh]

It is, yes. Not that I've used one either, but... I have semi-recently returned a stray trolley or two in the car park of the big supermarket over the road. (...it was late at night and I may have taken it for a spin around the car park first as a stim...)

[shinydh]

My partner @moonlight-fox reblogged this noting how we met doing live commentaries on (UK episodes of) Deal or No Deal, a show that - *certainly* in its British form, with its quasi-serialised format* and gleeful embrace of its own lore for better and worse - frankly invited an autistic subculture around it.

I could just about believe that "having something to talk about" that is mainstream enough to fit the OP definition thereof *is* something that eases the path to finding a partner - but I don't speak from experience (I thought I was aro until my mid-20s, and before I'd meaningfully considered dating I'd suddenly fallen in love with my fandom friend, the interim period on a platonic dating site literally leading to more national radio appearances than dates**), and the thing with an online social environment is that suddenly interests are the filter and geography isn't. Many of my special interest friends aren't even on the same continent as me, and as a direct result of this I have had my music performed professionally but - at least in front of a paying public audience - only on a foreign continent.

TLDR niche interest friends are real and they've certainly become more viable in the geography-shattering C21 socialising environment

* in the UK version, and the Italian and French ones that it was based upon, the other values were revealed by future contestants rather than models like in the US version and the many versions that copied it. And these contestants would stay on for an average of almost a month of episodes - one who was local to the taping area literally did double that (and then won almost nothing!) - and regular viewers had already become familiar with them before they played, and they had a narrative that could and did even feed into how their game played out.

** The site was approached by the producers of a BBC Radio show that was doing a feature on male celibacy, looking for someone with an entirely secular rather than religious/otherwise spiritual perspective like the other two guests they'd lined up, and that someone ended up being my sex-averse asexual-spectrum self. I literally said that, presented with any attractive person regardless of gender or body type, I'd probably just be like "ooh, shiny."

skill issue but okay

[shinydh]

^ context

[shinydh]

I personally celebrate all the festivals of light from Diwali onwards - and I think in its modern guise Christmas increasingly counts - collectively as the Shiny Season.

[shinydh]

To me, being autistic is having your environment randomly attack you at all times.

[shinydh]

While most of these seem to be concept designs of some sort that weren't built, and/or given this appearance by landscaping?

There is one stadium in Japan that is literally referred to as the Big Eye. Complete with retractable eyelid roof!

Football stadiums look like giant eyes when viewed from above

[shinydh]

laying down isn’t enough i need 2 be folded in half

[shinydh]

And then when these voices DO exist / are welcomed in popular music, they still get highly gendered and sexualised a lot of the time!! Which really throws me as a composer with sensory issues that draw me towards such voices for the same reason that I'm sex-repulsed...

There is something utterly soothing to my bat ears about a contralto just sinking and sinking into tenor range. It is one of my favourite sounds in the world and I wish it were valued more and differently.

So I’m a millennial of a certain age, and when I was a teenager Garbage was my favourite band. I’m singing along to the second album today and it’s just hit me how low Shirley Manson’s vocal register is. And what a relief that is. I have a low voice for a cis woman, and so my singing range has always been lower (I can comfortably sing a tenor range). I cannot safely or comfortably sing soprano. Because of how gendered people’s approach to singing is, I have never felt like I fit. Always seeing it as a failure that I am not a soprano, or that the top end of Alto is harder for me. As a kid I didn’t understand why I ‘had’ to sing the higher bit in male/female duets, when the male part was easier. I saw my dislike of the female part as a failing, yet another suspect thing about me (because of course I always suspected I was queer). I even had a signing teacher briefly as a teenager, who forced me into soprano by just assuming based on gender. She let me choose a Garbage song, but upped it to a soprano part I found uncomfortable. It did not occur to me to ask her to pitch it lower. I had no idea at the time what my range was. I just assumed I was untalented.

Since then I’ve joined a choir and watched the person testing my range raise their eyebrows as I managed to go lower and lower. I have found songs in my range, which a male/female tenor or contralto can only comfortably sing.

Normalise women (both cis and trans) with low voices. Normalise the idea that all kinds of women can sing incredibly low vocals and that this is beautiful and valuable. That the reality tv circus acts of hitting high notes isn’t the only impressive and wonderful singing display.

[shinydh]

At least with Black Friday it makes a certain amount of sense purely on the level of "International supply chains go brrr" I guess? (The first retailers to export the idea if memory serves were American online giants. And Asda, who were a Wal-Mart subsidiary at that point.)

Maybe that's what happened with Halloween too, creating "growth markets" for fancy dress and confectionery.

When I’m an old lady I’ll still be informing young people that Halloween never existed in this country until the 90s /early 00s when people who sell us stuff realised they could use it to sell us more stuff, and Halloween-themed stuff suddenly appeared in shopping centres without warning and was relentlessly marketed to children, and adults saw right through it and disliked it (“what’s this American sh*t, why are there pumpkins and witches in shop windows this never used to be a thing”) until they got used to it and young generations grew up thinking Halloween had always been a thing here even though kids born just a decade earlier had to be taught about it by the TV or school. Also it trampled over our pre-existing Fun Cultural Event When Kids Get Dressed-Up which had never needed to be marketed so aggressively and therefore became less relevant

I don’t mind at all if you love Halloween but it’s so weird to see my younger cousins convinced that it was always a thing in France when I remember being taught at school what trick or treating was, like “let’s learn about cultural traditions that are exotic and fun and different from ours!!” and I’m not old. Millennials literally saw Halloween get astroturfed into our culture with no explanation when shopping centres just went “from now on this is something we’ve always done” and we had no choice but to be like well OK I guess 🤷‍♀️

[shinydh]

Friendly reminder that this hell site is owned by Yahoo, a company who are now actively advocating for the death of Net Neutrality.

Friendly fucking reminder that the site is actively forcing users to unfollow the net neutrality tag after 20 or so minutes of following it.

Friendly reminder that this site is now actively trying to limit our ability to share information and spread awareness.