#I know other trans people across the spectrum who have issues with certain pieces of terminology

[deadhawke]

How about when it comes to normalizing talking about trans sex can we please keep in mind:

1) Not making assumptions about how a trans person would like their genitalia or other body parts referred to

2) Not making assumptions about if a trans person wants to use certain parts of their body when it comes to sex

Sex with trans people SHOULD be more normalized 100% but even some positivity posts make a lot of assumptions about how trans people as a whole want to have sex and it is getting a little exhausting.

[rndyounghowze]

Susan Cinoman’s “Period Piece” Draws First Blood With 36 Storytellers and 12 Performers

@periodpieceplay Gave us a wide range of stories on a topic that is usually just seen as “lady problems” @susancinoman @kcdirector

By Dana and Ricky Young-Howze

Los Angeles, California

Venmo: @rndyounghowze

Review 224

We were prepared to let this night of short plays about periods pass us by. Period Piece conceived by Susan Cinoman was a hot commodity with a rolling list of performers every night that spanned the space of three weekends. Try as we might we couldn’t get permission to the first or the third nights. Then we got an invite from Kristina Wong, one of the performers in the show, who came through for us right at the buzzer. While we didn’t get to see all three weeks we came in with certain expectations. None of those expectations came out with us after the show. This team of theatre artists led by Director Karen Carpenter went on to wow us in every single way. Let’s start from the beginning...

Better Than Elephant Dung

By: Jacquelyn Reingold

Reingold set the tone by having a super tampon to start the night. Geneva Carr is someone who has been on our radar for a bit and the way she made the character both relatable and funny was a real feat. It makes me laugh even now to think that the one thing that The Man of Steel can’t handle is the thought of period blood. It served to highlight the frailty of toxic masculinity in a fun way.

Cramps Services

By: Maria Elena Rodriguez

This was the first time we saw Kristina Wong acting in a show that wasn’t hers and it was so fun! It showed the kind of range and comedic talent that makes her one of our favorites. The play highlights the fierce dedication and technical knowledge needed to supply every person that menstruates with the products they need to just get by. This is usually a world that is invisible to the cis males of this planet. I love the way they lifted the veil. Using the backdrop of buying for craft services was genius. The hierarchy of chips to pads is something I wasn’t ready for.

Prayers To Menstruatia

By Destry Spielberg

One can often define their period by things that they can’t do. Can’t wear what you want, can’t go out where you want, the pain! It was really great to find a writer that was willing to put these things in the context of a new found freedom. Finally able to go out during the pandemic then hit by the period gods. However if feeling powerful and beautiful is embraced nothing can stop you. Destry explores the things that have been gained at the end of the pandemic and it is more than water weight.

Waiting on Womanhood

By: Ngozi Anyanwu

I really resonated with this one. Bleeding must mean death. If it doesn’t you must at least be punished in some way by the patriarchal system. The part I really resonate with is that being a woman means being watched with all these eyes on you. Candace Boahene gave us a remarkable performance that packed a lot of heart into a very small space. Ngozi created a scene that gave us the perspective of another culture in the capsule of a young student wondering about the future. Growing up could prevent her from doing and being all this young girl could be. It was important to put in to context periods globally.

Day 22

By Rhiana Yazzie

Kimberly Guerrero is very funny yet very frank in this piece. Not many people see their period as their friend. For some people it may be their oldest friend. No matter what you think you definitely do notice when it’s missing. Thanks to Yazzie for shining a light on how hyper aware people who menstruate are about any and all things period.

Way More Scary

By: Nicole Lynn Evans

Add this to one of the subjects that we didn’t think were going to be covered during the evening. Ricky’s mom is in a chair and was raised to be very proactive and proud about periods. This was very familiar and very cathartic and honest. Nicole Lynn Evans spared nothing from her straight and to the point take on the issue. When we talk equality and rights our disabled people often get left behind. Periods add another layer to that. We need to be open and honest about periods and disability to make change.

Zooey Deschanel Wants To Save The Cows, And I Want To Know Why My Abdomen Hurts

By: Jaimie Jarrett

We loved seeing a trans period moment. Jaimie Jarrett was killing us with lines like “trans is just a fun way to misspell trauma”. As two beings that fall under the trans umbrella we really appreciated it. In fact we were really expecting a lot of “bleeding equals female” in the night. I’m so happy that this show went out there and got the perspective of all people who menstruate and talked about the PTSD and the physical and mental toll dealing with this can have on them, on us.

Glorify! (the messy parts)

By: Christina Anderson

Sometimes plays need to bring up chicken dung to get their story across. Adriane Lenox took us wonderfully from rescuing a wedding dress from period blood (that’s a horror story and a half) to bringing us a charming story about throwing crap. We love seeing Black female professionals onstage and we are so grateful to have seen her.

A Really Good Lubricant

By Lally Katz

Now all of us know that sex and periods are fabled far and wide to be mutually exclusive. Others think you have to make a mess to make it any fun. Carissa Kosta sold this monologue of a woman walking that knife edge of not wanting to disappoint a potential lover but also really wanting him to leave. The part that gave Ricky chills up their spine was Kosta saying “thank God” at the end. The last thirty seconds of the play told the entire story. It was really one of the strongest of the night.

Flash Of An Eye

By Elaine Romero

Ricky has known some gymnasts and thinks that they are the most serious athletes alive. Carmen Carrera struck all of the notes you get from a gymnastics coach: dead serious, brutally honest, but also supportive. Romero painted us a great picture of a world that showed us the dark side of what most people call a dainty world. Stuff like using Tampons to keep uniforms clean, describing the massive changes going on in young athlete’s bodies, and even addressing the superstitions of their parents show that this is a different and crazy world than what we see on ESPN.

Interview With A Punk Goddess

(A fable 4 bloody sisters everywhere)

By Caridad Svich

I had no idea what a punk goddess is before but now I’m wondering where I can sign up. Caridad Svich made being a bloody beautiful monster seem so cool! Lauren Patten nailed the piece. You have a woman in a job interview which should be one of the worst places to get a period. Instead she flips the script and becomes a powerful being who tells people what she wants and that they’re going to give it. Amazing writing.

All The Shades Of Red: 13, 35, 45, 46

By Sarah Ruhl

We can’t even begin to tell you anything about miscarriages. We don’t even have the vocabulary and the language to talk about it. Sarah Ruhl pulled back the curtain on this dark and intimate world. Jessica Hecht was the perfect person to act as our handhold through the different moments of a life and how periods fell into it. Sarah Ruhl showed how our lives can be marked by these weird red milestones, the toll they can take on us, and how we look on the other side.

It’s a shame that we still need to have a feminist equality conversation around how humans bleed. That fact that this is a touchy subject for some, intimately personal for others, and a thing to be reviled by the patriarchy in the twenty-first century is atrocious. We’re so glad that these artists came together as one to address all the different intricacies around this issue. Every piece of this night was unique and different. In our experience it has been rare where we see a showcase with each piece centered around a theme and it does not hit the same monotone note every time. I was expecting a lot of “I am bleeding hear me roar” but it wasn’t that. In fact it hit a lot of different notes. We were so afraid that it would not encompass the whole spectrum of people who menstruate and it did. We were so shocked and relieved. Here’s to a show about periods and blood exceeding our expectations.

Check the Project Out For Yourself Here

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[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Let’s Statistic 4: The Stats Strike Again

Thinking of making this a bi-annual sorta deal.

I have twenty-seven Sims who have been officially placed and ranked in BCs old and ongoing (including Sini), ten who are currently making the rounds, twenty-seven whose BCs or involvements are no longer active or otherwise dubious, and nine in reserve for future competitions or story-based projects. This makes seventy-three Sims in total. Ten new arrivals, four of them reservations. One of them I made just a couple of days before this update came out.

I added a new section to my spreadsheets at the beginning of the year: the Special Snowflake Summation Sheet. This is to head off any more anons who may ask whether any of my Sims aren’t “special snowflakes”. Considering being trans, being queer, and being disabled as the indicators of such, we have twenty-three Special Snowflakes, twenty-three that nearly count, fifteen that barely count, and twelve that do not count. (Mind you, among the twelve, only four - Sammy, Dalibor, Auguste, and Al Wilbur - have “no” in all three slots. All the others have ‘sorta’ or a question mark in at least one field.)

Of the seventy-two, thirty-five are designated as male in-game, while thirty-six are designated as female, and Alex and Eun are still their own thing. That’s two new DMACs (Oz and Octavio) and eight new DFACs; I’m taking care to make the gap between them narrower, as you can see, and until the latest one they were at exactly the same level. I want to maintain this closeness from here on out, however easy or hard that may be.

None of the ten new arrivals so far are cis - literally none. As established in Percy’s profile, I have set myself a goal to, unless absolutely required, never make a cis Sim again, which I have been sticking to quite well so far. (Lisa is the only possible exception, but only possible. Depends how I feel when I release her.) Twenty-seven cis Sims, counting the loss of Percy after the shift to demiguy*, out of seventy-two accounts for 37% of my contestants... or, put another way, 63% of my Sims are un-cis.

If we take into consideration almost all of the Sims I know for certain are not cis (excluding Butch, since Butch does not yet have a confirmed pronoun set at all), nineteen of my non-cis Sims use standard pronoun sets and nothing else, defining ‘he’ and ‘she’ as standard in this instance. Thirteen use a combination of standard and non-standard sets, which includes Sims who have a penchant for all pronoun sets; another thirteen completely use non-standard sets. If we consider ‘they’ to be a standard set in the sense that it’s the most universally accepted NB pronoun, those numbers become twenty-four, ten and eleven respectively.

Counting each explicit pronoun-set use only once, my non-cis Sims have nineteen unique pronoun sets between them, including ‘no pronouns’. This is a ratio of 17 non-standard to 2 standard, or 16 NS to 3 S depending on if you count ‘they’ as standard or not. So gitte would not have heard of a maximum of 89% of the pronouns I use, which I guess is close to the 99% she claimed when she first brought this up?

Fifty Sims are confirmed to be on the LGBTQ+ spectrum through either sexuality or gender identity; thirteen more are assumed to be through any category; Butch and Xyq are unknown. That’s a range of fifty to sixty-five of my seventy-three contestants - 68.5% to 89%.

It’s interesting to note that three.5 of my Sims so far have had their gender or orientation change over time, in an organic sense rather than a ‘this has been clarified when I wasn’t sure before’ sense as with Myron. Calfuray was initially made to be straight, but later gameplay put him as bisexual; Madison was initially cis before becoming a demiwoman early in death; and of course Lyra Maurer’s realization and transition. Percy’s aforesaid shift to demi-guy*, while made before he became a public download unlike the others, still counts as a .5 on the grounds that Clover got access to him before then and played him as cis accordingly, hence there was something there to be changed. 

One could teeeeechnically argue that Castor counts as well, since Castor’s aromanticism was hit upon post-MMBC and public download; I will defend this, though, on the grounds that Cas’ aromanticism is only half of the split attraction model that Castor operates under, and their pansexuality is not affected.

Myron remains the only Sim I have ever had to have been killed specifically for being on the spectrum. (Though Oz was singled out for it, and probably eliminated because of it, he wasn’t killed per se.)

* = For some reason, my spreadsheets are telling me I did this to Peter Jernigan as well, shifted him to demi-guy. The thing is, I don’t remember ever deciding on this directly or setting it in stone with anyone? But it must be something I’ve planned, otherwise the spreadsheet wouldn’t reflect it? So he’s in the ?? category for now. I may make this change explicit once Peter is released to the general public, or I may not. We’ll have to see.

Forty-five of the seventy-three, or 61.6%, are disabled (Skylar has been placed at no, but only for now, so subject to change). Twenty-four of those forty-five have at least one mental disability; twelve have a physical one; two have both; seven are hidden.

The three Sims to join the ‘hidden’ category are Oz, Alice, and Octavio. Oz has undiagnosed bipolar I, and Alice is, as I put it, “Implied to be an abuse victim? How much this impacts nym is up for debate”. So same case as Stellan, really. Octavio is hidden on the grounds that her low empathy could be a symptom of something, but not necessarily, and as of yet nothing else about her neurology is overt.

I have fifteen CAS-intended Supernaturals out of seventy-three; five of the fifteen are witches. (Skylar, despite claiming to be a Nogtail, doesn’t count as a witch in this instance. More on that when ce happens.) The three ‘story’ Supernaturals remain the same; three non-occult Sims join the death-induced Ghosts (that aren’t ghosts in the download file) - Ruya, Jake, and Calfuray Odell, who killed himself early into 2017 by my headcanon.

Thirty-three Vanilla Sims, five van/ban cusps, six Banilla, one ban/berry cusp, and twenty-eight Berry.

Four of the ten news have three pieces of CC, making 13 total (I think I forgot Percy counted as three too with the freckles? Or something like that). Vanilla is the first of my downloadable contestants to break four pieces of CC, but this was mostly for the purpose of showing off the new skin I’d made, and I do not expect this to become the norm. Two pieces is still the majority at 23 out of 73, but three is catching up fast.

Thus far, I feel like this year has been the year of Changing Categories, and taking contestants across multiple projects. Sera’s transferral from her old MMBC to Ostkaka MMBC and Lyra’s clean-up for use in Slaughter or Salvage was made concrete and confirmed, but on top of that: Oz underwent the same process to become a future MMBC host of his own; Percy, Seth del Bosque, and the secret-pending that I still can’t talk about just yet, were officially brought through from what were initially one-shot side projects to be canonized as contestants and future contestants respectively; and Auribus was similarly pulled from first being a Sims 4 baby to then being in line for a Rosey project to then being actually submitted to a melien project.

Of the ninety-eight in-game traits available for my use (discounting Unconventional), I have now successfully used all ninety-eight of them in my Sims. That’s... that’s got to be worth something, right?

I’ve used: ten traits once; thirteen twice; twenty-three three times; twenty-one four times; twenty five times; five six times; five seven times; and one trait a whopping eight times. (Keep in mind I am including contestants I have not officially released yet in my trait calculation.)

My most frequently used trait is Snob: Cashlin, Shabnam, Jake, Jack, Akakios, Hopkin, Lisa, and Percy. Friendly, Hot-Headed and Proper haven’t been used on any more Sims since the last incarnation of the statistics list; but Alice has brought both the use of Good from six uses to seven and the use of Coward from five to seven alongside Vanilla.

Obviousy, Octavio is the most recent Sim to have a unique trait. The rest of the single-use traits are Commitment Issues for Elanor, Hydrophobic for Cree, Handy for Lyra, Born Seller for Casey-Mae, a mistaken use of a bad trait for SLIP, Equestrian for Riba, Heavy Sleeper for Elliot, Loser for Butch, and Animal Lover for Percy. McQuoddy has lost Gatherer to Daisy; Stellan, Loves the Heat to Vanilla; and Karla, Eco-Friendly to Oz.

The Sim with the ‘most unique’ / ‘rarest’ trait distribution is Cree; three of her five traits do not go above two uses each, and the most used one is Daredevil at five. Conversely, the Sim with the traits who have had most use among my set is, of all people, Akakios; her traits do not dip below five uses, and she has both Good and the most-used Snob. (Cashlin technically has more traits with high usage, at two sevens and an eight, but the low-use of Sailor balances out that number.)

All in all, including every single repeat, my contestants share a grand total of 363 traits between them.

Let’s round off by talking about the Fifth Place Squad! It consists of seven Sims as of right now: Midnight, Castor, Lilavati, Stellan, Myron, Cree, and Cashlin. (Shockingly, contrary to my expectations, Cordelia has not made the fifth place squad.)

Five of the seven are ‘special snowflakes’; the other two nearly qualify for such. This is because Lila is the only one among them that is cis, while Cashlin is the only one that is for sure neurotypical and able-bodied.

There is a 3-4 split on the rig in mild favour of DFAC; same for occult distribution in favor of not-ordinary-human (though Cree is the only one to be CAS intended, and she’s an Imaginary Friend); same for coloration in favor of Berry (two vanilla, Myron is banilla).

All of the disabilities among the six of the seven that have them are mental ones, though Castor and Lila are still the two that double up with physical ones, by sheer coincidence!

None of the seven have zero pieces of CC, strangely. Three have one piece; two two, one three, and Castor as usual is the awkward outlier. The CC of four of the seven pertain to custom eyes; an overlapping four, to custom hair. Myron and Cree have both. Cree also holds the dubious honor of having custom hair, skin AND eyes, a distinction they share only with Madison outside of the Squad. 

The most popular traits among the seven have two uses apiece: Daredevil (Castor and Cree), Diva (Castor and Myron), Hot-Headed (Castor and Cashlin), and Natural Cook (Lila and Myron). None of Midnight or Stellan’s traits are repeated among the group.

[mythicalmodernity-blog]

So, day after the march in Washington and being there (which was amazing holy shit), some thoughts. Negative first, then positive to end on a high note. 1: Why the fuck did Scarlett Johansson talk so damn long. Like. Shit I only caught half of it and it was kinda bland and not very insightful???? Could've reduced it to 3 minutes and helped keep things on schedule (and maybe had Gloria Steinem closer to the actual march time rather than Scarjo, because SERIOUSLY). Because- 2: HOLY SHIT THE SCHEDULE. In general I adore the organizers for what they did and who they got to speak, but damn. People literally just started marching after Angela Davis spoke because at that point we were an hour and a half behind when we were supposed to march, and frankly I was slightly disgusted about the lack of communication with us due to the disabled and elderly people at the march. Like really you are going to not inform us how many speakers are left, how long it will be when we ACTUALLY start marching when there are disabled and elderly people in the audience who budgeted their spoons to show up to the march on time, deal with horrific transit, and then stand in the cold misty weather? My sister had to leave the march after only 30 minutes walking because of how late the march started and how her back literally had her sitting down in pain with her face tucked into her knees at one point due to the standing and weather. Like there is a reason I'm not complaining about it running late alone or about the lack of toilets, because I totally get the turnout was crazy big and beyond what they could expect. Heck I ain't even complaining about how in most places you couldn't hear a damn thing of the speaker because once again- CROWDS WERE FUCKING HUGE. Unless they had the budget of Njord they could not have set things up properly for that many people. Just tell us a fucking timetable people. A rally is awesome but people came to march, changes of plans or delays need to be announced and hopefully a little apology given considering, once again, the disabled and elderly people in the audience. Fuck I could barely move after all of it and I only have minor back issues, god bless those with more serious health issues. 3: All the pussy and uterus signs. Like ok- on a level I totally get and support the need to address the whole 'grab them by the pussy' bullshit, and how the lack of reproductive health or education for women exists so let's fuck with those cisdude asshats, but. BUT. As a trans person it made me uncomfy at the sheer amount? And focus on that one line vs all the other horrific shit? IDK. Complicated feelings. Though I did want to blast out of the air all the "the future is female" signs that were around like fuck that dude. (I'm sorry but it erases nonbinary people, uses 'female' instead of 'women' which emphasizes a whole bunch of biological cissexism, so yeah.) 4: Wished I wasn't with my mom at times, at least before the march started, because she is a very hardcore planner and getting super pissed at the organizers which on one hand I get but like. Let's respect the people speaking??? And enjoy the moment a bit??? (Though once again fucking hell couldn't they have just TOLD US THE NEW TIMETABLE so those who needed to sit down or get out of the rain could have left and come back????) NOW FOR THE POSITIVE 5: HOLY SHIT THE SIZE AND SO MANY PEOPLE??? And I wanted to high-five all the lovely fellow trans people who were so bold and came out in force, and the entire LGBTQIA+ spectrum (I saw a rainbow flag with 'ACE' across it! It was awesome), and just guys. Like. All the streets were flooded. It is so hard to conceptualize even with words. To march and know that even if a quarter of those people put their money where they mouth was in SOME way.... That's fucking inspiring. And I think I will always remember one of the first signs I saw- a art piece with two black women, one in a wedding dress the other in a tank and pants with a rose tattoo across her arm, holding hands gazing at each other with 'LOVE IS LOVE' splashed across it. It struck me as such a personal sign- I couldn't help but think it was the poster holder's own relationship displayed. And so many people came out and bravely showed the fullness of themselves for the world to see. 6: JANELLE MONAE, ANGELA DAVIS, AND SO MANY OTHERS! Omg there was this little girl Sofia who spoke and she was so strong and brave and god just. There were so many brave people who spoke and I was so happy for them to be there and speaking truth, even if I didn't catch most of it due to where I was in the crowds at certain times. The organizers got some great people, were amazing at keeping the rally on track despite all they must have had to deal with (once again- biggest complaint that they just didn't inform us of 'hey it's gonna be x time to march now due to how many people showed up and etc) and honestly did try to include a lot of different voices, and wow just. So many inspiring people. 7:  WOMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD BEING SO AWESOME AND BRAVE AND YES. YES. 8: Coming down from the railing escorting my sister to the metro to see the huge main part of the march flow down below, a gigantic constitution splashed with "WE THE PEOPLE" for all to see, marching down the street. 9: Seeing a middle eastern woman with a rainbow tutu being interviewed, a full smile on her face and me having hope the voices of those who have been silenced will be fucking heard. 10: Pussy hats. Like I know there has been some debate about them, but goddamn it was such a grassroots movement that women of all types had a hand in (some cobbled them together with spare fabric, others got them donated by knitters, some had pink cat ears they grabbed at a store, some rainbow, some black, some pink with rainbow stripes, etc etc etc), and there is such a fuck you to the establishment that devalues "women's work" and consumerism in that statement, with items that people made themselves from old sweaters or knitted themselves or etc etc etc. 11: Just hearing the roar of people as the crowds cheered in unity. Like. Holy shit man. 12: Being blatantly out about my queerness around my mom, aunt, sister and my sister's friend. Fuck yeah.