#homebound

[swollenbabyfat]

Hypocrites prayer

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

[hoshi-kawaii]

I'm so so so jealous of people who get to leave the house and do activities and can be in sunlight and move comfortably in their own bodies who don't have to worry about what they might feel like just 10 minutes from now.

[crippleprophet]

“that’s an indoor people problem” right. the indoor people. notoriously not members of your community. because ‘indoors’ is ontologically at odds with ‘real,’ by which is generally meant ‘meaningful.’

[chikinan]

I miss them, man.

[campgender]

happy crip time tdov 💖❣️ as a homebound person, i have a fraught relationship with most understandings of visibility, but i’m happy to be able to celebrate transness with y’all in all our semi-isolated glory 💓😘

(ze/zem/zyrs or any pronouns)

image description: three selfies of Mac, a white man femme with a red buzzcut & stubble, round black glasses, & septum piercing. ze is wearing a pink fluffy bathrobe and poses with zyr long pink & red nails as the bathrobe showcases some strategic cleavage. the photos each have a different snapchat filter: blacklight neon lipstick prints, VHS effects, & cartoon cherries. end image description.

[ltwilliammowett]

Homebound, by Marek Rużyk (1965-)

[heiibo]

[2dmax]

dearest cain and benji for @chikinan!

GO READ HOMEBOUND

[tothestarstothenight]

exploding the terms chronically online, go outside, & touch grass

💥💥💥

[federer7]

'Homebound #20' Hong Kong 2012

Photo: KC Kwan

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

[hoshi-kawaii]

Sometimes I forget that other people typically leave their homes everyday and can just casually go for a walk outside of their homes.

How do you have the confidence to exist in public spaces? How are you not terrified of what horrors may befall you at the end of the block?

[crippleprophet]

Is it okay for people with agoraphobia to look and take some of the advice you have for housebound people on here? I'm not really great at picking up nuance so I'm worried that it'd be crossing some boundary or that it's not the intention of the tag

that’s completely okay, i appreciate your desire to be respectful even though i’m sorry you were concerned! i absolutely consider folks with agoraphobia my comrades + community members and i’d be super honored if anything i’ve shared is helpful (+ am always interested in hearing what that was if you’re comfortable!) the rest of this is not anything you need to answer your question, just thoughts i’ve been having on the subject

i haven’t had the opportunity to talk to enough homebound [due to chronic illness / “physical” reasons] people to know if this is a common experience but for me i’ve noticed that similar to chronic illness often carrying depression with it, since becoming homebound i’ve become terrified of leaving the house.

this is definitely influenced by the fact that it’s untenably painful, my photosensitivity (in the UV sense not the epilepsy sense), the ongoing pandemic, the fact that i only left the house to go to the doctor for over a year & i’m afraid of the doctors appointment itself due to medical trauma, etc etc but like. there’s also the very strong pull of habit – i’m an incredibly obsessive & ritualistic person – and what Goffman refers to as “the relief of self-isolation” for marginalized people sheltering from a hostile society, a phrase i read in undergrad 5 1/2 years ago that’s stuck with me ever since for how profoundly it resonates.

i’m not trying to say these are necessarily your or any other person with agoraphobia’s feelings & experiences, more to illustrate how the liberation of all homebound people & shut-ins & hermits is bound up together; any sanist strategy for oppressing agoraphobes can easily be leveraged against me, not least because as a severely underdiagnosed person, the medical establishment does not think there is any “legitimate” “physical” reason for me to be homebound. to respond to this oppression by arguing it’s inapplicable because i’m not crazy would be untrue + a cruel act of lateral violence.

i’ve been reading a lot of butch/femme history recently (i post about that on my main @campgender; followers age 18+ only please) & have found myself entirely reconfiguring my understanding of the queer art of isolation, the incredible ability of our ancestors to hunker down & survive under circumstances unimaginable to the average person. i absolutely don’t want to deny the deep pain – not only the aspects i experience but also the heightened isolation of people without or before internet access + the ways these circumstances / forms of oppression can foster abuse –

but my god, so many 50s butches didn’t leave their homes during daylight hours for years in order to not be hate crimed for their gender presentation, & that’s the folks who were making it to the bars. so many others – “discreet” couples who didn’t want to risk being outed by engaging in queer community; people assigned female who “passed” as men & their partners; butch sex workers & other people with identities perceived as contradictory or unacceptable – existed marginalized by both queer & normative communities.

every time i think substantially about homeboundedness i always get tracy chapman’s “subcity” stuck in my head. obviously my access to housing period is a huge position of privilege, & i’m in the most economically secure position of my adult life so far; the abjection i experience is nowhere near the scale of people in the position of the speaker of the song, who’s implied to be street homeless. but the line “people say it doesn’t exist ‘cause no one would like to admit that there is a city underground” is such a succinct & accurate depiction of living the kind of life society tries to convince itself is impossible. but there truly is a rich genealogy of homeboundedness especially in queer history.

again i hope some of my posts & such are helpful / resonant! wishing you all the best 💓💓

[chikinan]

Cain + Benji reference sketch because the old one was too off 👍

[campgender]

glamorizing my disabilities or whatever ✨

[ID: three selfies of Mac, a homebound femme gay man with red hair in a buzzcut and short beard. ze has a septum piercing and large black glasses. ze is wearing a large, fluffy black bathrobe with cheetah print fabric around the neck and cuffs, and poses with a hand showing off zyr black stiletto nails with gold accents. the middle photo is in black and white with a thick black border; in it, Mac holds a weed vape to zyr lips. end ID]