#it is used to benefit the future generations of trans people

[zanderism]

realistically when i die i want my body to be donated to science, in hopes that further research is done on transgender bodies so that future generations of trans people have more information to go off of, and hopefully with said studies on my body we can reach an age where trans people are less polarized, more accepted, and things like surgeries and hormones are much more accessible.

i do not want a funeral. i do not want to be buried. i do not want to be cremated. give me to science.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

New donors needed to help keep Scarleteen’s queer, trans and gender nonconforming sex educators going!

We, the queer and trans, staff & volunteers at Scarleteen spend the vast majority of our time giving support. We very actively maintain a friendly and accessible website full of resources, advice and information, and provide a caring, safe and patient environment in all of our direct services. We continue to make a massive contribution towards sexuality education as a whole, as we have for the whole of our 25 year tenure. Everywhere we go we receive thanks from educators and service workers for the motivation we, and our founder Heather Corinna, have given them to do incredible work in their communities. However, for our daily survival and our dreams of the future, we need support too!

Unless our current trajectory changes we will not have the funding this year to give our volunteers end-of-year stipends to reward their generous efforts, nor bring our codirectors’ wages any closer to industry standard or even industry average rates of pay for their positions and tenure - averages which we continue to undershoot by quite some margin, nor will we be able to reimburse those staff for the many hours they have worked in excess of their basic 30 hours a week. We will also be unable to increase their healthcare benefits which for one disabled member of our team, will have been exceeded 4 times over by actual healthcare costs by the end of the year, which they have had to pay for out-of-pocket.

As part of our annual Pride celebration we are asking you to consider becoming one of the 50 (and fabulous) new recurring donors we are determined to find this week! Please consider supporting a few good queer & trans people to help us continue to deliver queer sex and relationships education, info and support, which remains free and open to all.

Recurring monthly donations of $10 or more are part of the treasured community of donors who give us peace of mind like nothing else can. We will need a further 250 recurring donors at that level or the financial equivalent to keep us on-track for our most modest projections through the coming years, so whatever help you can give us today to exceed our initial target of 50 will be cherished by us more than you can know.

Here’s some ways to help:

If you can become a new monthly donor, please do! We would love to welcome you to our valued bunch of fabulous supporters!

If you are already a donor, please consider tacking on an extra $10 per month, even temporarily, if you can!

If you cannot currently afford to donate an increased amount, or cannot donate at all, please consider reaching out to someone who you think can, so that eventually we can find that new donor. (And if you manage to sign someone up, do let us know so we can thank you!)

If you only want to or can give us a one-time donation we will still be incredibly grateful for that help at any level. We know a thing or 12 about deep financial limitations and having to choose very carefully where you give.

Please go to scarleteen.com/donate to begin your monthly donation, or if you have further questions head to scarleteen.com/contact drop us a message.

Thank you once more for your support and for being your queer/trans/allied/otherwise-awesome self,

Yours sincerely,

The Scarleteam …

of Scarleteen: queer sex ed for all since 1998❤️

[pawberri]

thank you for all the posts you've made, your takes are always so refreshing to hear.

I want to know your thoughts (if it's okay with you, you can also totally ignore this) about all the "men hate" I see online. like I (poc transmasc non-passing) get it, there are genuine societal gender problems. transmisogyny does exist-women face more challenges than men do. but it genuinely hurts when women, especially trans women, think it's funny/quirky to call men trash or say they want all men dead or whatever. idk I just am hoping someone else understands, you know?

There's a lot of nuances to this question. First, I just want to caution against focusing too much on trans girls as the perpetrators of this. A lot of the asks I get from trans men seem to really fixate on trans women as the perpetrators of hard line gender essentialism. I really think trans girls are not the main people we should be focusing on here. If a trans woman is saying this stuff, take the time to analyze her ideology outside of that pithy comment and consider how much trauma and how little power she has in the world. That said, trans women are affected by this kind of ideology just like us, and they rarely have the power to wield it against others in the way cis people can. I know it hurts to feel isolated by your own community, but that kinda gets into my second point.

Part of dealing with this is learning an impulse progressive cishet dude have had to get used to over the decade. Sometimes, "men are trash" or even "kill all men" are not literal phrases. They are things women say when they're in the throes of trauma to vent their frustration. "Men are trash" in particular is generally pretty lighthearted and used to complain when you have a bad date or something. You have to get used to analyzing what someone actually means and airing on the side of empathy. You, as a man, are the one with some amount of systemic power over that woman, so you are the one who needs to prove you are dedicated to not being a misogynist. The same thing happens when my friends say they hate white people. I have to assume they don't hate me given that I'm their friend, but that I still have some of the negative traits of whiteness. I need to care enough to be a good friend by being anti-racist and checking myself on my behavior. I need to be willing to prioritize their comfort over mine. That includes not becoming this meme:

Now that that's established, there ARE times when "all men are evil and should die" is an actual ideology. It's an ideology that hurts tons of minority groups before it hurts the most powerful, but it's also not really great if we assume it only hurts cishet white guys. Following it to its logical conclusion, it just proposes a reversal of oppression dynamics. This gender essentialism is a key part of radical feminism, trans exclusionary or not, but it leaks out of that community to general feminism all the time.

As a young person on Tumblr and Twitter, this deeply affected me. I internalized the idea that you can "just be a girl." It was repeated by some trans girls, but also a LOT of TME people. It was framed as trans inclusive, but it's trans inclusive in the way "political lesbianism" is lesbian positive. It posits gender as a moral choice that is completely up to the individual and unrelated to biology. It's the lazy version of "gender is a social construct." I felt sick and disgusting for wanting to be a boy because tons of well-meaning friends of mine had made it clear that "being a boy" was a choice, and it was the wrong one. "Boy" was a social category that could and should eventually be eradicated. Trans women were conditionally supported because they, in theory, made this future possible. This didn't amount to actual support, of course. It was an ideology mostly spread by afab queer people that mostly benefited afab queer people. There were a few trans girls who spread it, maybe some due to genuinely believing in the ideology and some due to social pressure, but there were also a lot of people straight-up grifting as trans girls who used this thinking to feel powerful in a niche community of teens. Remember fucking Yandere Bitch Club???

At a certain point, I genuinely thought of being a man as an unambiguous moral failing, and I lashed out at out trans men because of it. I wanted to feel powerful, and here was a type of man in my community I could shame and exclude. I still feel bad for making a bunch of ~girls only~ stuff in HS that excluded the one out trans dude at our school, my friend, because he was just a ~binary man~ and leaving him with no friends and no community. I treated transphobia like it wasn't a real oppression on its own and, in doing so, perpetuated transphobia. It happens a lot.

I wasn't really able to accept that there was nuance to the concept of manhood until I read this article while struggling to accept my own gender:

This is a pretty seminal piece of writing. It has its flaws, of course, but the empathy and intersectionality it highlights was life-changing. It also shows that this kind of thinking is largely perpetuated by TME people and hurts trans women greatly.

Gender essentialism is a bad ideology, it's a transphobic, transmisogynist, racist, etc etc ideology. It's literally essential to patriarchy. But it's also very easy to repackage into leftism and easy to dogwhistle. As a result, it's natural to be hesitant when you see someone saying they hate all men, but you have to tread extremely lightly and actually care what they're attempting to express. Because, yeah, men as a social class still hold power over women. They still have reason to fear and hate men.

I'm writing a comic about this stuff, actually, so look out for it in the future..........

[catboybiologist]

If there is no difference biologically between males and women, what is the point of hormone replacement therapy and top/bottom surgeries? Why don’t males get periods but women do? Why transition medically if there is no difference? Why don’t they have uteruses and periods?

I'm going to assume this isn't bait, and isn't from a terf (which it likely is but I'm giving the benefit of doubt), bc it still is a launching point for discussion. But the tldr is that this is a huge misrepresentation of my thinking, and the language of "males and women" makes me think that misrepresentation is intentional.

"no difference between male and female" is not what I was saying at all. It is somewhat subtle, but this is a crucially different point than I have maintained.

There are traits that we describe as male, and traits we describe as female. They are correlated with each other: eg, someone with a female reproductive system is more likely to have a female hormonal system.

However, using the words as categories that completely, unilaterally define the entire biology of each individual human is why the terms "biological women" and "biological man" don't make sense.

And yes, this applies to cis, perisex people as well! If you're a cis man, it's incredibly likely that you have a couple of traits that are "female", even though most of your traits are male. Vice versa for cis women. Even when people aren't categorically intersex, you still see cis women with body hair, occasional unknown male reproductive cells that can go completely unnoticed, and more! This isn't fringe cases or incidental happenings, this is the reality of human variation.

Every aspect of medical transition is essentially identifying a set of traits that a trans person possesses of their predominate natal sex, and making them the other sex. This is one reason why transition is also not "one size fits all"- not everyone needs to fully adjust every trait to be "male" or "female", whether it's bc some of their traits already are male or female, or bc you don't need all of your traits to be male or female overall.

The problem with saying "biological man" or "biological woman" is not that it acknowledges that male and female traits exist- its that they're overgeneralized categorizations that break down and become useless to address the biology and medical considerations of the individual. Even in genetics and lineage tracing, saying "male" and "female" holds an implicit, additional description that those individuals are reproductively female or male.

If you don't have a biology background, or are entrenched in gender binaries, I understand that this can seem like the same point as "men and women are biologically the same" but it's not. It's just precision in language, which is extremely important when we're specifically talking about medical care and science that centers around these exact concepts.

So to recap: saying that certain, specific aspects of someone's body are "male" or "female" is not biologically inaccurate. Generalizing this to sweeping, overly simplistic categories IS inaccurate.

And I'm about to fuck off to the mountains, so imma turn reblogs off on this post so shit doesn't get out of control while I have inconsistent or no internet access. But I def will explain more of this biology and language in the future.

[fleshengine]

unironically, dealing with like... casual transmisogyny is the most exhausting thing. I see a post on instagram, the first slide says "trans erotica" and I think "awesome, I wonder what's in it?" As I go through the slides I notice... huh these first couple are all transmasc erotica, well maybe the last few will be transfem. So I keep scrolling, and while it doesn't specify if the books have transmasc or transfem characters, there are tags for the relationships and they're all fucking Ms. "MM relationship" "MMM polycule" and I get to the end and there's not a single one that has a transfem character. I go to leave a comment like "hey please put 'transmasc' instead of 'trans' so people know what you're talking about. But I check the description first because that's polite. They've already added a section in the description (at the very bottom) saying next time they'll be clearer. "Title slide should definitely say transMASC erotica! I will makes this more clear in future versions, as trans women and femmes are too often neglected in discussions of trans literature [double heart emoji] (added 7/8/2024)"

Remake the post? I'm not kidding. If other transfems see this post, get excited and then scroll through the whole thing and then go to the comments, enough that the poster was made aware of the mix up, then it's going to push this post in the algorithm. This person is benefitting from misleading people, and they are aware of it. But fixing it is just too much work. And like... okay fine I get that it's a little exhausting to re-edit the image and then takedown and reupload the post. But when I went to their account to take a poke around I saw they made a part II to their trans erotica post.

I thought "oh cool they didn't change the first image, maybe they've included transfem erotica now!" Second sentence of the first paragraph of description: "Offering up transmasc erotica collection PART TWO bc I've been staying fed recently [trans flag][black heart][bow][smiling devil face]" Which at least personally I found really frustrating to read. They used the exact same graphic for the first slide as they used in part I, again implying that there would be trans people in general. I went through the books, there's two amab enbies, both of which are side characters it seems one of which is the devil So yeah, horray, you included tranfems. But the focus is still clearly on transmasc characters. But to be fair, it was posted before the edit to part I's description was added. But also even though part II was posted before that edit, it doesn't have an edit of it's own. Probably because there's plausible deniability in the form of the amab enby characters, so they can claim that all trans people are included. Despite it being two characters in ten books, neither of which are a trans woman. It's the sort of fake, tokenizing inclusion that really starts to get under my skin and pour sand in my joints.

I went through all the posts they've made since part II, I'd go through all the ones since part I but I don't have that kind of time and frankly this is fucking exhausting. Every book they talk about, sans the two featuring amab enbies mentioned earlier, is about transmasc characters. In both erotica and other genres, that's all this person offers. It's also really telling when they make a post about "trans enby & gender queer book accounts of follow", where I would assume that they might shout out a transfem account that focuses on that side of erotica, and from what I can tell every single account of the nine they shout out is transmasc.

People in real life: "hey dude what's up?"

Yeah yeah reality check whatever. Okay so is this account in and of itself a problem? No, a 800 follower instagram account that talks about books does not a cause for alarm make. Is this indicative of a wider spread issue in the queer community? Yeah actually, the exclusion (intentional or not) of transfem stories and creators from the community starts with what individual people are engaging with. If all you read is transmasc books, and all you talk to are transmasc people then you're going to have issues when trans people aren't that. I'm not trying to attack this account, I didn't include their username very intentionally. I'm just using them as an instance of a specific brand of transmisogyny that I see a lot and find fucking exhausting, that being extremely trans positive accounts that only ever talk about transmascs. I don't know where I'm going with this. I didn't really have a plan.

There's an aversion to trans women. For a variety of reasons society hates us. People who have an easier time integrating with society at large tend to overlook that, and instead often adopt some of those aversions subconsciously. They're not going to mistreat you in public, or do anything obvious, they've got manners, but they're not gonna read books about you, or shout you out. It sucks because I feel like a crazy person pointing it out. I didn't talk about it for years because I thought people would think I'm weird, but discussions of transmisogyny on tumblr have opened my eyes to the fact that I'm not alone, that other people also see this, and that it's an actual problem.

Thanks sisters. It sucks on this boat, but at least it's crewed.

[drolaticdaydreams]

you see! the thing is! revolutionary girl utena and the riot grrrl movement actually showed up around the same times, but during the early movement riot grrrl ideology was kind of rocky. it mostly focused on white women and rejecting a general upper/middle class upbringing, plus it has a bad history of excluding trans people and overall sparking a really extremist take on feminism that boils down to replacing the straight white men in power with straight white women that still embody a corrupt system.

the movement has improved itself overtime but the thing is that revolutionary girl utena, for all its flaws that i admit it has, kind of hit the ground running with a take on feminism that was ahead of its time. first of all anthy is a rare instance of a dark skinned character in an anime that isn't drawn like a racist caricature, and also one of the only dark skinned protagonists of that era. (dumb) people can debate that she's a flat character but the truth is that the whole story is for her; it's her life being brought a revolution. no one in rgu is white cuz obviously it takes place in japan, but it still rings true that the story aligns with the complexity of intersectional feminism that benefits to all women today, because what utena thought was empowering to all girls actually harms anthy and so on and so forth; even more so, what utena thinks is empowering her is actually hurting her all the same in the long run, turning her into the man she thinks she's fighting against that want them both crushed under it.

rgu also touched on the fact that putting women in a position of power instead of men wouldn't solve anything, because the system itself is rotten. even more mature of it for its time was that the show had a realistic ending where even after utena dedicated her last moments in the show to trying to free anthy, the coffin still fell away from her reach, and the swords turned on her. to akio this was a failure, and this is how a lot of people see fighting against corrupt systems to end: the system always ultimately wins against the individuals, and people lose hope that change can ever happen. however, utena's beliefs inspired anthy to leave ohtori, and then in the movie you see that the student council is given hope to leave as well. change, revolution, is gradual, but that doesn't make it any less worth it. in a lot of punk media i see this ending where the heroes can alone end the oppression in the movie, but that's just not how it works in real life, but there are moments of victory that inspire others to pick off where they leave off, and a better future is imaginable.

i think finally, in regards to the riot grrrl movement, rgu is way more nuanced with gender. you honestly just have to look at the fans to see that utena's gender expression gave trans people who watched rgu more vocabulary to express themselves. more than that though, i think the show was careful with how it approached both gender and femininity. the prince and the bride are both gendered roles, but masculinity and femininity aren't intrinsically toxic for each other. the show doesn't punish utena for being masc, and likewise even after escaping her role as a rose bride, anthy likes dressing fem. it's the way heteronormativity has made us think of these expressions: that masculinity has to come with aggression, and femininity means subservience. neither is a bad thing for the other, and people should be allowed to present how they want, not how they feel their personality means they have to.

all in all i think revolutionary girl utena is a relic for punks and riot grrrls and it isn't considered as such by a lot of people. the show really was ahead of its time. i hope this was coherent!

[camoftarakas]

Gonna be super for real, here is my masterpost of why its important for me that you take advantage of your right to vote to choose Kamala Harris.

Section 1: Personal Issues

I am a transgender person. I live where i'm pretty sure it will be safe to do so for the next 4 years, but not only should i not risk it, i shouldn't be willing to send my trans family into danger, especially the young ones. Republicans are making a big point out of removing the Trans agenda from schools. what the fuck does this mean? right now the target is that teachers, counselors, school faculty who hear a child is trans will be obliged to report it to their home. this is a direct danger to the next generation. If you do not hide who you are, it may be ripped out of you. Children will feel they are better dead than being out. and adults who abuse queer kids will not be held accountable.

I am an autistic and disabled person. Donald Trump and his cronies think vaccines cause autism. this is absurdly hateful, but beyond that they call for pullbacks and regulation for vaccines. For an incredibly safe, incredibly guarded piece of protection against disease, regulation means less access to medicine. More epidemics, more sick people, shorter lives for the disabled.

Section 2: Domestic Issues

the full access to abortion and childcare must be restored. the two are forever linked, and both are essential healthcare. people in my life benefit from this, your neighbors benefit from this, human beings benefit from this.

whoever is in charge has the sole ability to appoint supreme court judges for 4 years. The court can not become further packed against us, whoever you are, because they are not shy about infringing the rights of your neighbors or your family on party lines.

the ability for people to only just get by under a Republican presidency will be gutted. tax cuts for the wealthy are not just immoral, but the government can not operate on less income. The burden comes down on those who deserve it least. Hunger, homelessness, freezing, overheating, death.

voting rights are the target of Republicans, especially for the most reliable opposition: Black and Latino Americans. this is happening now in states desperate to suppress minority voices, or to assimilate them into a regressive white culture of last century. If that isn't bad enough, voter suppression is sure to expand to any dissident population. The future is on the line.

Section 3: Global Issues

Donald Trump uses dog whistles to express israeli support. He calls democrats "Hamas", claims they are "Destroying Israel", calls jewish people delusional for supporting them. There isn't a perfect palestinian candidate. that is all but explicitly banned in politics. Vice president Harris will be clipped out of context saying that she vaguely supports Israel's right to self defense, because that is the most she can say without causing panic and confusion. If elected, Kamala Harris would be the most pro-Palestinian president ever, and it's not any amount of praise to say that. But she seeks solution, the end of Israel's control of them, the acknowledgement that what is happening there is unconscionable. MAGA has trained us to think that a vote to a candidate is a total endorsement of all their actions and word-of-mouth values, but it is the NORMAL and DECENT thing to do to demand better from the person you elect. Donald Trump is in Netanyahu's pocket, you won't get anywhere asking him not to rain terror on Palestine.

Ukraine has a right to self-governance as well. Republicans would pull support, and hold more conferences with Putin than with our allies across the world.

Republicans will refuse investment into clean energy. Trump's last presidency saw a resurgence in Coal, and ramblings about dead birds. Republican control will hold back any responses to the climate disaster another 4 years.

Section 4: Closing Thoughts

A US president can not fix the world. A US president can't even fix their own country. But god damn it don't give in to assured worsening. don't vote for third party; they're not gonna win, they're not gonna win next time, the point you want to make will fall on deaf ears; the time and place is not now or here. don't skip voting, 1/3 of americans don't vote because they don't think their voice makes a difference. vote in every category, there are important issues left to you. You may not turn your state, but you can turn a policy, or your city, or your county, or your representative, or make sure people in your district get a fair trail with a good judge, or that a good person is in charge of your schools. vote like your neighbors life depends on it; it does. vote like the world depends on it; it does. vote like it's the least you can do; it is. You have to participate in this one simple task, flawed as it may be, to not be a hypocrite when you ask for change, when you ask for progress, when you ask for justice. You can elect people who serve you, not who demand you serve them. You can choose to take a step forward, instead of standing still while you're dragged backwards with the rest of us. you can save lives, real lives! you fucking matter, every time, but please for the love of god, do the bare minimum at least this time. And after we're done, we'll go out, and ask for more, ask for better, because government is for us and they need to listen to us, forever, whoever.

[ladyimaginarium]

Okay so I'm& revitalizing this again.

Hi, my& name's Arcana& / Angel&, and I& am the core / host / singletsona of The Imaginarians Galaxy. If you want to help support a local queer, trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, intersex, mspec, aspec, autistic, disabled, neurodivergent, hoh, chronically ill, psychotic spoonie witch two spirited mixed native and ashkenazi jewish bodied multigenic DID system who's an aspiring activist, fashion model, voice & film actrex, ASMRtist, youtuber/vtuber, polyglot & writer, it'd be greatly appreciated.

This month is Pride Month & Indigenous History Month so please support our indigenous turtle island communities, know who's land you're on and support queer indigenous turtle islander creators, & on top of that, July 13th is also my& birthday & July is also Disability Pride Month & Queer Wrath Month !! I& just find it's funny how white queers get all this support & clout, but the minute a queer Native Jew asks for any kind of mutual assistance, it's like cricket noises, but anyway, here I& go again, I'm& putting out these links just in case someone actually does wanna help out because it's only right to do so being an indigenous queer two spirited bodied system, after all.

If you're white, you can think of this as paying reparations for us& for dealing with antinative racism, antisemitism, ableism, sanism, pluralphobia, psyism, audism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, multitransphobia, aphobia, exorsexism, intersexism and the ongoing colonization of my& people and fighting on the behalf of the indigenous, queer and plural communities on here while for any POC reading this, you can think of this as extending your solidarity with us&, so after I& spent a lot of blood sweats and tears into what i& do, I'm& finally asking something that would benefit me& for a change, even like 10$ could help, but even if you still can't for whatever reason, please spread the word out to help us& live easier as a disabled, neurodivergent mixed native system in this ableist & racist world.

Donate To Our& P*yP*l

Multipurpose Psychiatric Service Dog Donations

Throne Wishlist

So far these are the best ways to support us&. Information on commissions, booking tarot readings with me& as well as sensitivity reader information will be available in a reblog eventually.

We& didn't have a great childhood growing up as we& were abused for a decade & we& weren't taught many lifeskills so we're& still learning from the gate. Even though we aren't in a life threatening emergency, I'm& generally not in the right financial space to spend a lot & buying my& own shit because I'm& Saving Up™ for a lot of things, including the possibility of me& moving to my& first ever apartment next year & my& future service dog & I& cannot work due to my& multiple disabilities, & I& can't stand up for long periods of time without feeling exhausted & just being an overall madcripple, so whatever you do, it'd be greatly appreciated, especially if you like our& content.

Remember, reblogs > likes!

[public-trans-it-deactivated20240]

If you are trans, how do you have an alter that isn't? (I'm asking out of ignorance and genuine curiosity, not malice. I know you haven't had the best anons lately)

Thank you for the parenthetical on that one. I didn't read it that way at all, but I appreciate someone going out of their way to specify that it's just curiosity and not someone sealioning. I also just love parentheticals in general. Feel free to ask more, or DM me! I'm happy to go into more depth.

The answer is quite simple: I'm just gonna force femme him, duh. (Okay, no, not really)

Read More

A warning upfront: This post is likely going to be written by multiple alters. Expect sudden shifts in tone, as well as shifts between first - and third-person perspectives. It's also gonna be a lot of rambling. I'm going to fucking hate it tbh. But I'm also more than happy to elaborate on specifics. The joys of having conflicting opinions on a single topic.

For context, this ask is in reply to this previous post I made about DID, how I feel names relate to it, and how i feel my experience differs from other peoples. In it, I mention that not all of my alters are trans.

It just feels... cringe. Like, I know that is probably certainly internalized ablism. But any time I discuss my own internal thought processes and the fact that there are just straight up other versions of me in there, I can't help but think I feel like one of those really awkwardly written teenagers in media who like... pretend to be possessed by demons and stuff. Part of it is also a little bit of fear.

That was... a bit of an oversimplification. It is rather difficult to go into detail, especially when the alter in question is the one who least likes talking about the experience of being plural.

While I don't talk about it with others, and will absolutely interrupt any attempts to map it out, I AM at least somewhat aware of how my system is shaped and who is in it. And that not everyone who used to be in it is still in there. There are versions of myself that are just... gone. And I know one of the things that results in that is too much internal reflection. So I just... don't.

Am I trans? I mean, Ceetee is, and I'm Ceetee, so probably. But I'm also the one who doesn't have that luxury. I'm the one who has to go to work. I'm the one who has to go by He/Him pronouns. I'm the one who answers when someone calls our deadname. And that is too important a part to risk losing to introspection, and the effect that has on us.

We are on HRT, the body we are in is going to change. We are looking forward to potentially going under the knife in the future. Lipofilly, vaginoplasty, etc. That's going to complicated things. I genuinely don't even know if I will still exist after that. I have plans on how to handle our social transition, that might make it smoother, but... again, I don't have the privilege of thinking on it too much.

Its... really difficult to write this out honestly. All of our discussion happens internally, thanks to us losing our amnesiac barrier a few years ago (thank God for that. Huge increase to our quality of life.) We would probably benefit from just making a discord server for just us, and using pluralkit or the like to talk with each other. But the idea of differentiating each other externally is HORRIFYING.

So instead, I'm the one handling our HRT. I have to, because he isn't willing to for the reasons mentioned above. And I can't even really discuss it well because he gets in the way a lot. Which I don't fault him for, it's his job, it's literally why he exists, and the several years I went with him not being involved socially were... extremely rough. I genuinely feel privileged to have him taking the brunt of all that for me. The nice thing about DID is it's actually a GREAT way to delegate tasks. If he represents the parts of us that don't have the privilege of changing, I can represent the parts of us that can.

But the truth is, all of us in here are undergoing an HRT we don't actually WANT. It gets us closer to a more comfortable body to live in, but it will never be possible to achieve a body ALL of us are happy with. We all have different gender goals, and as long as we are all stuck in the same body, there is no such thing as 'Gender affirmation'. That's why I use the label Aegogender. Looking it up, there is... not a lot of description of it. But for me, it has a very clear interaction with dissociative disorders.

I'm not genderless. Every single one of us in here has a gender. And they are not all the same. Which means our system cannot have a single gender. ANY transition will, by definition, go against the goals of others in the system. There is no way for all of us to be happy in this body, as long as we all have to share a single body. My "true" ideal body, would be an incorporeal hivemind piloting 3 or 4 bodies. Leaving us all connected to each other, but with our own individuality.

This is, obviously, NOT POSSIBLE. So HRT is the compromise.

Every single one of us is trans, even the one still going by He/Him and using our deadname. And so, just becoming something DIFFERENT is good enough for now. No solution has to be perfect forever. If we need to do something different in the future, we can just do something different in the future! We don't NEED to figure all of this out now.

I mentioned in the tags of my detransition post that I have a lot more complicated feelings about detransition. This is why. I fundamentally identify more with the concept of being a creature capable of change, than I do with any single gender.

Which means... once I transition, I'll almost certainly end up transitioning again. From what to what? I have NO IDEA. Will I end up detransitioning? Maybe. Will I end up pursuing some completely different presentation? Maybe. I dont know. I'm not that person yet.

I'm just gonna have to wait and see who manages to last that long, and what is best for all of us.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes

[1] See implantation of NFC chips in people in Sweden. https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/658808705/thousands-of-swedes-are-inserting-microchips-under-their-skin?t=1570529276200.

[2] See Journey Towards The Abyss- Scattered Reflections on the Techno World for a critique of nano-technologies being developed for this purpose or the recent development of Metal 'Trees' in Ireland for the same purpose: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Metal-Trees-Suck-Up-CO2-From-Air.html as examples

[3] Zoo's and research facilities in China developed this technique which has now been used in dozens of cases. https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/animals/panda-porn-and-other-desperate-measures-to-get-rare-species-to-mate.aspx

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation

[5] See Dean Spade: 'Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law' for a comprehensive critique of these trajectories or the United Kingdoms Section 5 of the Public Order Offenses Act as concrete example.

[6] See Silvia Federici: Caliban and the Witch.

[7] See Saidiya Hartman: In the Belly of the World: A note on Black Women’s Labor

[9] An endangered species of insect

[10] Nasa for example, produced a paper in 2016 outlining a possible strategy for the colonization of Mars https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a21330/nasa-wants-martian-resources-for-martian-colony/

[11] This trajectory is most exemplified (though not limited to) by the group 'Extinction Rebellion'

[12] Such prophets of the Eco Fascist 'Left' as David Attenboroughs who proposed ending food aid to the African Continent as a way to tackle 'overpopulation' and the discourses around 'overpopulation' in general unmask the potential directions off this trajectory. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sorry-sir-david-attenborough-this-isn-t-the-way-to-tackle-over-population-8824385.html

[13] Although most of the current documents around outer space extractivism currently solicit the use of machines, one only has to look at the disproportionate distribution of current extraction projects requiring human labor in the 'global south' to see who will likely be drafted for off world projects and who will benefit from them. An interesting NASA solicitation from 2017 can be seen here: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-seeks-commercial-solutions-to-harvest-space-resources

[14] The 'Death Drive' is a conceptual framework first proposed by Lee Edelman in the text 'No Future' and later expanded upon in the journal Baedan vol I; it is the possibility contained within queerness to negate futurority and a negative, anti social turn against the future.

[transbucket]

12/4/22 - Out of Maintenance Mode

There's many considerations that go into maintaining this site. Despite many "offers" by volunteers and organizations over the last decade, no consistent help has ever materialized. The admin maintains it alone. As a result, the site is structured to run as independently as possible, with ad revenue to pay for its server cost (literally tuned to just cover it), and a moderation system that allows members to police the site themselves for inappropriate content. This works surprsingly well most of the time.

Unfortunately, during the summer of 2022, an article in the most read newspaper on Earth was written about transgender care with a mention of the site by a journalist who did not reach out beforehand. Traffic immediately 10x'd and then 100x'd. Dozens of people contacted the admin: some overwhelmed with relief to find the resource, others absolutely terrified that it was now more widely known.

At the same time, the site admin's father was dying of cancer. To make matters worse, a famous trans streamer was the focus of a targeted harassment campaign that led, after weeks of intense and dangerous struggle that itself made international news, to the takedown of a significant site that organized and supported attacks on trans people and resources.

So, the article was not great timing, to say the least.

Out of an abundance of caution in that risky climate and lowered ability to attend to the site, the admin chose to take the site down entirely. Was that the right choice? It's hard to be sure: it meant no access to those who needed it, but also no access to those looking to harm us.

In September the same year, months after the traffic spikes had decreased to nothing, the admin's father died. The busiest months of the work year followed. Now it's two months later in December, and after some consideration, the admin has taken the site out of maintenance mode.

Just as taking the site down is a choice that can't please everyone, bringing it back up is also rightfully controversial. There will never be a 100% risk-free way to present the resources on this site. Even if we switched to removing broad access and began hand-approving every new member to the site, the reality is that someone who identifies as trans today may not in months or years from now, and may not be motivated to protect these resources in the future.

The goal of the site was to maximize access to information about our experiences getting care, and that means a much looser screening process than you'll find in other private groups. Sharing on this site is an incredibly courageous and generous act that hundreds of trans people have done over many years. Each one of them is potentially sacrificing their privacy so that someone else can benefit. When you use this site, when you share it, when you discuss it in articles, you should ask yourself: have you made a sacrifice to your community equal to that sacrifice? Are you honoring what was done for you?

The admin is still committed to the site, but there is no way to promise it will be up or even should be up forever. It may be that in the years to come, private groups on Facebook or Discord, even with the inevitable data loss that happens as they change over time, is preferable to a site at a fixed address. Time will tell.

If you are able to code and can contribute to feature development, especially in security, please reach out (use our normal contact mechanisms).

[marauders-fanfilm]

Hi Everyone,

   I want to sincerely apologize for both the long delay between updates and the necessity for one at this point in general. When we set out to make this project, none of us ever anticipated we might still be working on it eight years later. And while a lot has happened in that time, I promise you, no one wants it to be completed and released more than we do.    2022 has been a difficult year for the project on a number of fronts, but we’re still standing. This year has seen an essentially unprecedented demand for the VFX industry, while they continue to fight for the sort of protections and working standards that the rest of the film industry and most industries in general have. Last year’s near IATSE strike was a wake up call for many of us that the film industry can very easily become incredibly dangerous and destructive to the lives of the people who work in it, and we’ve all tried to do our best to ensure we and the rest of our crew members take the time they need to take care of themselves and their loved ones. This, while absolutely critical and my top priority for the team I am responsible for, has meant that there have been some delays with our progress due to artists needing to take time to focus on themselves and their families, or simply because they’ve needed to prioritize their non-volunteer work, and haven’t been able to juggle both.

   As I’m sure just about all of you know, over the past few years, the original author of the franchise has dedicated her time and legacy to an anti-transgender campaign. I’ve talked about it previously, but it’s been an incredibly difficult situation for all of us. While our film doesn’t benefit her in any way, it’s complicated to dedicate months or years of work to a project that is still playing in her sandbox. For some of our artists, it simply wasn’t something they could come to terms with, and they had to step away from the project for their own well being, which all of us on the TGS Production Team absolutely understand and sympathize with. I’ve struggled with it a lot personally, I know most of us have. Speaking purely for myself, while I think the franchise and world will always be tainted by its author’s bigotry now, I love this film, I am incredibly proud of all of the hard work our cast and crew have poured into it, and I made a commitment to see it through. I intend to do so. But I will never harbor any resentment towards any member of our team who doesn’t feel the same way, and wish them nothing but the best of luck on their future endeavors.

   There’s not much we can do from our small platform to challenge her, unfortunately. Our film is long-since written and shot, and a time capsule of where we all were as fans and aspiring creators when that happened. What we can do is support our trans team members and supporters, and reject bigotry like Rowling’s. We will be adding a note on the situation and our rejection of her and her prejudice at the opening of the film, and I have elected to strike her card from the animated credits sequence. She created the world and most of these characters, I can’t change that. She’ll be credited for her part of course, as it would be wrong not to, but we don’t need to plaster her name across the screen either.

All that said, where is the project at?    The first two acts are just about picture-locked with finished VFX, barring a handful of shots that are currently in the works. Among the work done on this section:

An incredibly intricate steadicam shot of the Marauders fleeing Filch’s office after releasing a series of fireworks and dung bombs, as seen in our very first piece of concept art. This effect required the work of four separate artists to rotoscope the actors, 3D model and track the set and camera movement, and the actual effect work of the smoke and fireworks. Talented artist Porter Justus is hard at work on the scene between work on his Masters from SCAD and preparing for the birth of his second child. Congrats again, Porter!

Top to bottom creations of numerous Daily Prophet page graphics and layouts for a montage sequence by talented Malaysian 2D artist Kunal Chopra.

A Virtual CG version of the Marauder’s Map for various shots by American artist Alyssa Nicholas, for tight insert shots where tracking a physical prop became too difficult.

Artist Jorge Gúzman, who was only able to join us briefly before having to leave to focus on paid projects came on and helped with a handful of Marauder’s Map shots.

Artist Chris Shivers has been working on a spell effect for a series of shots of Lily Evans between his other paid work.

UK artist Nathan Collins has been hard at work on several potions class scenes, including the infamous Amortentia potion!

Nic Bahn, a German artist known as WizardingsFX online, has been hard at work helping us upgrade the opening scene of the film.

Talented Spanish artist Pablo Nadal, who goes by Pancatum in online fandom circles, has been busy for much of this year, but when he’s had time to join us, he’s worked on a great sequence between Regulus & Marlene.

And lastly, our VFX Supervisor, Martin Bayang, who between his demanding hours at his Los Angeles VFX day job and helping me manage our team, has still managed to carve out time to work on a number of shots from our Valentine’s Day sequence!

The Third Act is where most of the work is still being done, including a large fight sequence and where most of our focus is.

When VFX Artist Emma Matzke has time between professional VFX work and parental responsibilities, she is currently hard at work on Snape’s big final scene, which is looking absolutely amazing!

Our dynamic duo from Spain, Guillermo Valadez and Iván Rubio, both full-time professional VFX artists, are bouncing between a couple of segments, including that large fight scene, and another key moment of the finale I can’t talk about without spoiling the ending!

There is still work to be done on both Sound and Color, but the brunt of the workload has been on the VFX front.

There is still a decent bit left of both final action beats, along with a handful of Marauder’s Map shots, and one complicated VFX shot for the final sequence of the film that has proved more challenging than anticipated. But we’re hard at work trying to progress through them as quickly as possible.

  Our composer J. Paul Bourque has had a very busy year with his professional composing work in New York, but we’ve slowly been chipping away at the last of the score for the film. We are currently undergoing some revisions to the final sequence, after which Paul and Writer/Creative Producer Ben Wessels will be going back through all the tracks for final adjustments and filling in some final instrumentation, along with the recording of one track I won’t go into detail about that is being recorded live. We’re all really excited about and proud of how the score is sounding, and can’t wait to share it with all of you.   Lastly, while I had hoped to save this announcement until the trailer reveal, I am incredibly excited to announce that over the last couple years we have been working alongside the magically talented Tom Ya, also known as The_H_Project, a french architect who used his lockdown time over the pandemic to create an insanely detailed digital replica of Hogwarts Castle! All of the establishing shots in the film have been replaced with custom shots Tom crafted for the project, and I cannot overstate how much it adds to the final product. Tom is now working, again as he’s able to between his busy day job and time with his new bride (Congratulations again, my friend), on integrating elements of his model into some other shots and sequences, and the results so far have been truly fantastic.

   I want to apologize again to our incredibly patient friends, families, and fans that the project has taken so much longer than any of us have anticipated. We all want to see the project finished and released, and we are working as hard and as quickly as we can to make that happen. But I also just want to take a moment to say how proud I am of our team and everything they’ve accomplished, both on the film and in their personal, professional, and creative lives since the project began. We all really appreciate your years of patience, and we will continue to pour our hearts into this project, and try to get this film finally completed and out to you soon. Happy New Years, everyone. Aaron

[eruditetyro]

anyway yeah i went to the river conservation music festival today. yeah they divert most of the waste generated to compost or recycling. yeah and people can just hop in the river to cool off. yeah and the bands i heard play all said things like “we’d like to dedicate this set to the river and the history of this place and the people, the tribes that lived in this river basin, the people who have lived here and taken care of the land.” so anyway. the most patriotic thing there was either the snow cone place whose chalkboard sign said “happy 4th” or the four different organizations with tables offering to help people make sure they’re registered to vote at their current address. a lot of things are very scary and the upper echelons of power are mostly set against us. but the seeds of the future we hope for are rooted here. trans people didn’t stop calling this place home when the bathroom bill passed, and the local abortion fund does its best a year into the new status quo. the climate action groups and the land conservancy groups and the environmental activist theater groups are here. the community gardens, the really free markets, the creative reuse centers, the food not bombs chapters. the gay bars, the pride events, the streets where every business has a rainbow flag prominently on display. there are enough of us to sustain these things and there are enough of us here to survive whatever comes next if we hold fast and lean into each other. i do believe that, i have to hold that hope. and since we get today off of work to be patriotic, this is the closest i come to that: these people i live in community with, this place i call home, i love them and want to see them thrive. i am glad that the everyday of my life is suffused by the efforts of many to create the communities and spaces they want to see, i am grateful that i get to benefit from that. i hope the way i live contributes positively to this thing we are all building together. i hope this river basin stays a haven for wildlife and safe enough to let your children swim in. i really hope we all make it, whatever happens next.

[redheadbigshoes]

i wish more people who support the concept or bi or m-spec lesbians would stop and consider just for a moment WHY lesbians might be so upset about people implying or outright saying that we can like men. these people (and people in general tbh) seem to think we're only oppressed for liking women, when, personally, i've faced way more hostility, aggression, and weaponized "ignorance" over the fact that i do not like men. (before anyone twists my words, i'm NOT saying lesbians have it worse than bi women/nonbinary people, because they also experience a unique axis of oppression that lesbians don't by being attracted to all genders. our experiences overlap, but they are different, and it's okay for both parties to talk about that)

growing up, i was terrified of the concepts of marriage, sex, romance, and love since everyone around me only spoke of my future experiences with these things under the rigid assumption that my partner would be a man. i tried telling them i'd rather be single forever (i had yet to realize i was "allowed" to be gay), and they always insisted that i would grow up and change my mind, which made me even more terrified. they presented partnership with a man as something that was an inevitable, unavoidable part of my future. i'm lucky to have had a (mostly) supportive environment when i finally discovered that i felt this way because i'm a lesbian, and i can happily say i'm no longer afraid of those things since i now know i can have them without a man, but holy shit, do people not get how traumatizing that is? to be a young person only able to concieve of love as a weapon to be wielded against you?

lesbophobia from cishet people is one thing, but when it's coming from my fellow lgbt people, who i come to for love, support, protection, and companionship after being isolated in my daily life as a result of my lesbianism (and being autistic and gnc), it's just ... unspeakably cruel. i don't think most or them fully realize what they're doing - i'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say most of them are just young people that believe they're doing the right thing - but that doesn't excuse this level of violence, especially with how quickly the notion has become popular. they should know better.

also like. not to mention how fast they'll throw trans women and trans lesbians under the bus to dunk on "mono" lesbians but that's another conversation.

A lot of them don’t want to think for a few seconds why we’re so upset about it. They don’t want to recognize and accept our lack of attraction to men because a lot of them are misogynistic, they don’t think there’s people out there who are not attracted to men. It’s not a coincidence that “mspec lesbian” supporters are most likely the same ones saying everyone is bi.

This is what happens with every type of prejudice. People who don’t experience certain thing are less likely to sympathize with people who do face that. Therefore they think we’re exaggerating or that it’s not real because they don’t face it. The saddest thing is that other marginalized people should be able to sympathize with other prejudices because they face oppression.

And lesbians suffer a very unique type of oppression because it’s directly connected to both homophobia and misogyny. Just like you said: we’re not trying to say we have it worse than other sapphics, we’re just trying to make people listen to us and take lesbophobia seriously. And what I say might be controversial but from my experience observing other people it does feel like lesbophobia is taken less seriously than other prejudices related to the LGBTQ+ community. Especially because it’s a very ignored and erased oppression since people immediately box us with gays by calling what we face homophobia when sometimes is a way more specific oppression than that.

It’s frustrating because most of queer lesbophobes are also fighting other kinds of oppression, but they’re actively silencing and promoting lesbophobia. A lot of people might not agree with me but I think they deserve all the hate and oppression they get, very hypocritical wanting to stop [insert phobia] while promoting others.

[lastweeksshirttonight]

It seems my experiment in actually writing something substantive and not just screaming about bangs was well-received! I will insist that it is a fluke for a while, just to keep up appearances, but truly, thank you all. Let's move forward with the first season of LWT!

Last Lee Tonight

(wherein we talk about shirts and the death penalty, not in that order)

Season One, Episode Two

(original air date: 5/4/2014)

Major topic covered: Capital punishment, Brunei

Trigger warnings for discussion of the death penalty and botched executions; homophobia

"As you know, our show is dedicated to covering the biggest news of the week, whatever that news may be. We have a long, proud, one week history of doing that."

As much as the last episode of LWT covered was a time capsule shooting us straight back to 2014, this episode proves that time is basically a flat circle. John opens this episode talking about Russia invading Ukraine, and how the US and allies are going to stop this threat by... imposing sanctions. (Thank God we grew more committed to actually helping Ukraine in our current timeline, Republican agents be damned.) These sanctions, both in the moment and looking at this from the future, clearly didn't do much.

Already the pacing of the show is growing slower, to LWT's benefit - the Ukraine segment, despite being about two minutes, hits more concrete satirical points and feels more put-together than everything from the first segment of episode one.

It seamlessly transitions to what the US was more interested in than the potential fall of Ukraine, the White House Correspondents Dinner. John hates the idea of it and shows clips where George Condon of the White House Correspondents Association talks about how its purpose has completely diverged from its intention in its charter... but he can't show it because the White House lost it. Let's use this space to remind people of the time Stephen Colbert fucking ethered George W. Bush at the Correspondents Dinner in 2006, as I inherently believe that ethering presidents was the entire point of the Correspondents Dinner as laid out in that charter. You can't convince me otherwise.

"And Now This" gives us our first "local newscasters get really excited about a dumb thing" clip package, this one for Star Wars Day. There are so many wide-ranging ways to sound like you're being held hostage while saying "may the fourth be with you"! (The lady who said 'I actually speak droid' painfully reminded me of child me, who said that maybe three million times. As I've said many times, I was a deeply weird child.)

Unlike last episode, episode two isn't structured like an ersatz version of The Daily Show, and instead is beginning to resemble the LWT format of the current day. I genuinely thought it took longer for the show to morph into that, but no, the staff collectively went "fuck it, let's spend fifteen minutes talking about the death penalty and see where it takes us". Good move staff!

John even acknowledges that it's a potentially awful choice to make for a show's second episode, particularly because he is a comedy show. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh John. Poor sweet innocent past John. LWT, a comedy. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

The kick-off for this segment is news in Oklahoma of an inmate dying after a botched execution. John isn't sure he wants to talk about it, President Obama doesn't want to talk about it, do any of us want to talk about this? But we're talking about it.

Despite the show moving more towards its current iteration, there is still that early-series weirdness to it all. For starters, the idea of John not wanting to talk about the death penalty, when he went on to be the subject of a SLAPP suit because of his show, has routinely discussed abortion and trans rights (the two things most likely to get people screaming at you in my personal experience), and is just generally is plumbing the depths of governmental and social misery every week, is a bit comical. Additionally, the segment officially opens with an extremely didactic "what is the death penalty and what are the arguments for and against" mini-monologue that seems designed to guide audiences through this new type of late-night show. John pulls off being a teacher well, but this sounds like an actual high school teacher trying to introduce a topic they know is gonna be a shitshow.

It is nice to know that the baseline for the death penalty according to the first clip is that we shouldn't execute innocent people. Bold statement.

John also sells the idea that he is an outsider to this topic since he is British. This is another thing dispensed with quickly on the show - he's an American and generally defines himself as such unless it's funnier for a joke - and I honestly didn't expect it to crop up in LWT at all. I'm guessing he brings it up so he can talk about British torture devices, a rich vein of violent nonsense he's loved his entire career, but point still stands. Genuinely shocked he didn't talk about burning Catholics at the stake. Someone must have stopped him in the writer's room from slipping his favorite joke in there.

I don't want to get too in-detail about the factual arguments for any given subject while doing this project, unless I feel like I have interesting additional insight from my own life or a clip shown is ridiculous enough to note it. In any case, this segment is a well-done, high-level view, from my understanding, of the basics of the death penalty argument in the US.

On that level, it is sadly hilarious that John makes a joke that the death penalty is a great deterrent to fishing without a license, since he has done multiple segments since this showing that no, it's really not.

The way this segment ends is also somewhat off, in that it feels like there should be something stronger tying it together. John offers a hypothetical about a guilty person committing a heinous crime and the family of the victims wanting their death - what would you do in that situation? And instead of a clip or a more rigorous examination of that hypothetical, John offers that his opinion is still that the death penalty isn't a good recourse, and that the opinion of you at home might be different, who wants to see hamsters eating burritos? It's... weird. And it's weird because I am looking at this from ten years in the future, recalling John begging England to not vote for Brexit, hearing and seeing the entire last video clip about forced family separation at the border echoing in my head. I can't expect past John to be at where current John is now, and yet, that still colors how I look at this first stab (...ugh bad wording) at a longform LWT segment.

The death penalty segment gives way to something seemingly ripped straight from The Colbert Report, "Other Countries' Presidents of the United States". Truly, this reminds me so much of "Better Know a District". This segment focuses on Francois Hollande of France, namely his complicated and gross history with women and how that somehow made him more popular with voters.

We move on to Brunei, which is a country. (Literal words from the show here, I'm not that ignorant.) Important note, he does not try to fool the audience into thinking Brunei is a country you think about so seldomly that you haven't realized that this ISN'T Brunei, it's actually a pockmark on my face. Namely, Brunei is starting an "experiment with Sharia law" that involves implementing the death penalty for homosexuality. John highlights the hypocrisy of the leadership's turn given their ostentatious wealth and lax morals. Again, pretty solid overview of the situation and the international blind eye being taken there, and good on John for criticising Saudi Arabia consistently.

Finally, our last "And Now This" is people falling asleep behind politicians. I adore this kind of dumb shit. The guy behind Biden is a treasure.

Random notes:

Lee obviously focuses on important things corner: Red is John's color and I will die on this hill. Red shirted John Oliver is my goddamn kryptonite. 10/10.

Gdi Lee you're getting old: I bought Stephen Colbert's Correspondents Dinner speech on iTunes so I could listen to it on my way to classes in college. WHAT A SENTENCE!

Apparently they did an interview with Simon Ostrovsky from Vice News that was cut for time. Not only have I never watched this, why were they cutting things for time on HBO? (I will make a separate post about this interview because I genuinely have no idea what it's about and forgot it existed.)

Filmed during the same episode is a Web Exclusive of John getting a case full of Pom Wonderful from the Pom people, and them telling him, in veiled language, to shove it up his ass. He is clearly delighted by the letter. "Dear John, What fun."

[admirableadmiranda]

Hello ladypfenix I’m sorry to bother you. My main account seems to have been blocked? If that’s your choice I respect it but I would like to know why? And if I change my behavior if I would be able to be unblocked? You were my favorite and primary blog to check everyday and I was very confused and concerned when I went and it said your page didn’t exist.

No matter the reason I will respect it and not bother you again, I would just like a chance to know what I did and if I can make up for it

Hello. Yes I did block you the other day, mostly for getting on my nerves with a bunch of small things. It wasn’t the volume of likes or reblogs, but mostly fandom opinions that I have otherwise curated my dashboard so as to not deal with. Fandom can be an exhausting space and I have blocked for less. However I was able to ignore that until the other day.

Since you want to know what the reason was, it was the post about the word queer. I have used it for myself for years, I believe strongly in it as a word for our community and I wish to stop it from being reclaimed as a slur when for decades it was a word for us, when it’s still a respected term in academics and collections because it has such a long, positive history. I do not approve of the idea of discarding it, nor that it should be dismissed as a slur. There is no word for anyone in our community that has not been a slur at some point, and it is the most inclusive, general word that exists. It is a word that is currently being attacked as a slur because it is inclusive, non-specific and offers the freedom to just say “whatever sort of identity I may have is actually none of your business and I don’t have to explain it to you,” and a large portion of this attitude comes from terfs and their other transphobic ilk attempting to twist a word that includes trans and non-binary and genderfluid and everyone else who I may not remember at this hour if the night into a slur so they can push them out of the community. To me, saying that it is a harmful word that should be left behind is saying that the further splitting and segregating of our community is correct and leaves us more vulnerable, not less. Queer being nonspecific is a function, not a flaw.

You want to know what you can do to perhaps be unblocked? Think on my words, and reflect on the intent and respect you give to those in debates. What am I trying to say? What are they trying to say? Who benefits from your opinions? Cause while you may have not meant it that way, your words smelled terfy and I cannot have that in my life and around the people I love. I blocked you because you posted that as a direct reblog from a post I agreed with on a bad day, and I do not always have the time nor energy to walk everyone through why and wherefore. I will not currently block this blog, I may unblock your main blog in the future. But I’m not unblocking it right now.

But you followed me for a reason, so I encourage you to consider, if you want to follow me again from your main blog, just why such posts as that may not be very welcome.

Also block circumventing is a very bad look. Tumblr can actually ban all of your accounts for block circumventing. I am not reporting you for this, but you should really be aware that when you’re wanting to understand what’s going on, creating a second account to ask the person who blocked you why they did it doesn’t exactly encourage them to change their minds.