#like no longer having to uphold this idea of femininity and actually being able to be herself

[amory444]

what are ur thoughts on alchemy and philosophy and how does this connect to pruaus

FUWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA(I forgot the pruaus part BUT I HAVE A LONGER RAHT FOR THAT.)

Alchemy has always been connected humanitys will to imitate and to be on par with the holy. The idea that we too could purify, mold, and combine objects and elements into our will-hell even our image- is actually what we think gods and deities could do. As much as people claim that alchemy was a sort of praise and worship of god, it was also the culmination of envy for the power that one thing holds over us.

We don't like being controlled, we like free will, we also like to look at something and say "yes! Yes that is me!". That's why we said the moon was feminine and the sun was masculine, that is why we created god even. We created someone in our image, someone we consider perfect, taking each part of what we consider perfect. It is what we are, what we want, but they both contradict. We are contradictory that is our nature. We want peace yet we want power, we want freedom yet we want control, we want love yet we want revenge. Alchemy has always been about the path to become like god, to be able to purify, create, and mold. We give objects something that we can relate to, because that's only way we're able to relate, to understand. Because all we really wanted was to understand ourselves.

The goal of alchemy is to reach a greater high, to create gold or to achieve the philosopher stone. One or the other, what's important ad that we achieve. Life has always been about a path to a goal.

"I am hungry, I must eat, my goal is to find food. "

"I am bored, I must seek, my goal is to find entertainment. "

"I want to understand, I want to know, my goal is to discover. "

A life without meaning is a life without a path, humans are always looking for something this they are always on a road to somewhere both literally and metaphorically. In alchemy we have principles, principles are not the base, they are not the original, they are simply he start in which things diverge. From salt we opened the path of stabilization of minerals, with sypfur we dissolved objects to welcome a new state. Alchemy itself was a step in the direction of chemistry and logic, as opposing as logic and belief can be.

By looking at things as humans, we discover more about ourselves as we try to fit ourselves into the box of the non living. Everytime we try to understand something we also try tp understand ourselves. Humans, as much as they can understand everything around them, cannot comprehend their own sub conscious. Because it's not ruled by a law of any kind. Scientifically, our psyche was never ruled by higher beings, our likes and dislikes are not always ruled by our environments, even down to our birth we can't exactly pin point why exactly we were born to this body, to this conscience, to this shape. But a rock, a rock is built on minerals and years of reaction. It has a law to follow, and idea to uphold, something we never had.

The only true wat to understand, is to combine. To study humans non alignment with the strict following of objects. To combine the rabid constant feminine with the still and calm masculine. The conscious that we know and the unconscious that we dont. To combine, amalgamate, to mold, the point is that we want to connect

As much as we like to believe that science, feelings, objects, things, life, is separate and on its own, we also have to accept that reality will always be a culmination of everything.

Alchemy is science, if science incorporated philosophy. Philosophy is science, if there never was alchemy.

Life's goal is the path as much as the path leads to the goal. To find the path we need to connect, to find the next route, to see the differing roads to walk to achieve our next destination. We can never truly be seperate as everything connects into everything and this everything is everything, but at the same time everything is nothing. No matter what we do we always try to connect the non human to the human, through numbers and symbols, whatever.

[thatheathen]

“Seize the day. Then set it on fire.”

We are living in that cyberpunk dystopia now, the very type Philip K. Dick warned us that could happen and is slowly creeping its way into our personal lives/minds and that's mainly due to big internet providers and the fascist governments whipped by corporations hijacking all modes of freedom even virtual freedoms. everything is connected in the system the ruling class decided and you are a slave with in that caste system until you die. oh gee fun. 

I feel bad for the devs that are forced to time crunch for this month. CD Projekt RED better compensate their workers for pushing this game out for them greedy selfish CEOs who are attached to this game that will no doubt be a hit and make tons of money, but at what cost? video game developers need to desperately unionize before its too late to even do so as most triple A games are made by wealthy liberal and or centrist elites who pretend to be progressive but actually hate unions, socialism, sharing, comradery, solidarity, grassroots fund raising cuz that’s all anti-capitalist and bad you see.  

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and that's exactly what cyberpunk is; it's a genre of unchained sci-fi yeah but it's also showing capitalism on steroids, corporations gone rogue and eating up all the earth's resources just to produce enough power and energy to run a whole city now requires a while country of power to push harder and harder to keep that light pollution at the maximum. animals should be going completely extinct in a cyberpunk future, what do humans even eat? 

To my mind cyberpunk should be about breaking away from cultural programming that makes us hate each other, fight and kill, it always boils down to those who have and those who have not social structure. That's a lot like Feudalism and a false sense of safety for all people. Cyber-feudalism is how it's structured underneath the veil. “Seize the day. Then set it fire.” 

Cyberpunk seems like a countercultural idea within the hyper-capitalist world that's still very male dominant. The feminine exist only to tantalize the masses, domestic females to slaves of profits and glamour. The brutal police forces ignoring human rights laws daily. Journalism is remotely impossible. So is the world of cyberpunk really a world of freedom and choices? Cyberpunk can be seen as a connection of like minded folk hungry for freedom and not need to fall into crime to survive. For many that’s the world you’re forced to live in or die in. rights are not natural handed from god, they are taken. cyber-rights seems like a fruitless fight in a hyper-cyber-capitalist reality; big brothers eyes everywhere. mass surveillance that would make PKD’s jaw drop.  cyberpunk-world cops are thugs beyond what we could imagine and could kill you on sight if they chose and nobody will care or not be able to do anything. nobodies memories can be trusted unless you express a certain class. all the punks, rejects, anarchists, anti-corporation, hackers, etc. are all outsiders, terrorist suspects. Every queer person or Muslim or any kind of marginalized group of that era is vulnerable as the system doesn’t favor them nor see a reason to protect them, with fascist-leaning politicians WANTING certain groups of people to literally die out. Those who struggle in any unequal world are going to be feeling the most pain. Lots of pain may mean; drug addiction to numb this awful reality, mod addiction to be less human maybe or change your identity completely. Lots of pain could also mean lots of anger towards the system and the state that’s making life so miserable for the 90% the citizens who have no power. cyberpunk 2077s idea is an “anything-goes” kinda place. here’s a sci-fi GTA/Witcher3 sandbox about a fucked up capitalist future that’s super fun and action packed!! It’s okay it’s not real though. Meanwhile capitalism as it exists today is grinding down the working class including the Dev employees working on Cyberpunk as I type this. long hours for the same pay. was it worth it? will it be worth it? will cyberpunk be the GAME that will end labor abuse in the gaming industry? 

People who are different, people who reject authority and anti-human social constructs, people who are spiritual without an organized religion, people so different and taboo to where the ruling elites see them as a threat, mocking those gross punks/queers/dissidents, but love their style and aesthetic because the rich have no soul and ZERO creativity. stealing is what rich assholes do best. rich people steal everyone’s aesthetic claiming it as their own and you begin to see YOUR aesthetic in the media regardless if it's offensive, it’s just unfettered anarcho-capitalist-land, there's no more restrictions to anything really. like ayn rand vision that would result in Bioshock’s world. that was a steampunk nightmare to an extent. point being the rich can do anything. money is power and it only matters to those who thirst for power. Many people just deal with money and hate at the same time cuz what other choice do people have? Poor people get no choices and all the bad days.

The rich and powerful will indulge in the vices of the poor to get another experience; meanwhile the real poor struggle to survive in this electronic hell world and your only choices are to fight and kill these hyper-corporations that run the planet's economy basically and that sucks. seems prophetic in a way to see what the future would be like if capitalism still stood and there was business as usual. I think a true dystopian cyberpunk world is full of dark skies and contagious air due to the extreme pollution i.e. climate change the previous generations of humans ignored and still ignore because profits and luxury and drugs and opulence and legacies and authoritarian rule is far more important to uphold you see. "human nature" is always condescendingly professed as an argument killer to why capitalism is the only way because hooomons are deep down real mean and violent... which is not true. 

Human infants literally can't live without being held and nurtured in a healthy environment. Humans are wired to love and communicate. humans lived a long time cuz they worked together. Humans lived even longer when they learned to domesticate animals leading to agriculture. only in the last 20,000 years have humans begun to grow their ego and misunderstand its message and purpose. fascists and billionaires take advantage of human minds and fool people into thinking there's no other way to live. it's a fucking lie. human beings are disconnected with nature. wires and cables are not non-nature, those are materials derived from nature. everything is nature, but not everything is natural like human concepts fabricated by civilizations.

“Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems. Capital, they argue, is the ‘unnamable Thing’, the abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance’. When it actually arrives, capitalism brings with it a massive desacralization of culture. It is a system which is no longer governed by any transcendent Law; on the contrary, it dismantles all such codes, only to re-install them on an ad hoc basis.” ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I want a cyberpunk game where it's a good kind compassionate civilization, a star trek like society, full of infinite exploration into the cosmos and into our minds... I want a cyberpunk world worth protecting, protecting the people from sneaky politicians (demagogues) and authoritarian thugs ready to install the capitalist religion of endless self-destruction and pain. remnants of evil scatter and reform, we must always help people who struggle under capitalisms spell.

[catboyfeli]

here’s some more current opinions from urs truly

gender isn’t real, so neither is nonbinary, and i think identifying as neither male or female just b/c you don’t like gender roles and don’t fit into a box is Regressive

i support trans people who identify as “other” due to atypical dysphoria and i think nonbinary and nonbinary trans people are completely separate things.

being trans isn’t a choice, but identifying as nonbinary IS a choice. b/c it’s an identity. being trans isn’t, including being nonbinary trans.

i think telling, for example, a masculine woman who relates more to men and doesn’t strongly identify with either gender, that she’s not a woman, is regressive and harmful, and that it’s simply enforcing gender roles. i also think that telling a feminine man that relates more to women and doesn’t strongly identify with either gender, that he’s not a man, is regressive and enforces gender roles.

gender isn’t real, so not identifying with either gender is normal, especially in gnc and neurodivergent individuals. trans people are trans b/c they experience dysphoria, and social dysphoria exists b/c it’s a trigger for sex dysphoria. if gender in society was suddenly abolished, then trans people would still exist, b/c they’re transitioning their sex, not just their gender.

i don’t support nonbinary because i think it’s regressive and enforces gender and gender roles. i think the only true way to abolish gender is to present and behave however you want without sticking a label on it. the only true way to abolish gender is to stop treating gender as real, to stop feeding into the idea that all men are x and all women are x and that it’s okay to say you’re neither just b/c you don’t fit into those boxes.

this doesn’t make me a bad person or mean that i hate anybody, and it’s not my business whether or not someone who ids as nonbinary is dysphoric. sex is real and gender as neurological sex is real, but gender as a social thing is fake. constructing more genders is regressive. it enforces gender. it supports gender roles.

i support people presenting and behaving how they want, but i don’t support something that enforces and supports gender. telling people they can id as whatever makes them most comfortable has become a dangerous statement and it’s been taken too liberally.

once again, i support nonbinary trans people, but i don’t support nonbinary, because nonbinary is an identity, a choice, and i think it’s cruel to compare that to what trans people have to go through. i think people care too much about their feelings being valid rather than whether or not their behavior is valid, similar to how the ace community brushes problems under the rug, like how a sexual assault victim may feel ace, but actually only feel that way due to trauma. it’s repressing their feelings to use a comforting label. just because it feels helpful doesn’t mean it is.

so yeah. i don’t hate anyone. i support everyone and how they wish to act and express themselves. i don’t support nonbinary because i think it’s regressive, not because i hate everyone who thinks differently from me. i support nonbinary trans people and view it separately from nonbinary. i think being trans becoming a trend has only done harm to society, because now gender is even more enforced than it was ten years ago and what being trans actually is has been warped into being a choice, an identity, a feeling.

this doesn’t make me a bad person despite tumblr screaming otherwise. i’d like to live in a world someday where men and women are equal and nothing divides us, and i think nonbinary enforces gender and makes that impossible. once again, when i say nonbinary, i do not mean nonbinary trans people. i support nonbinary trans people, but what nonbinary itself is is something i can’t support. nonbinary inherently enforces gender and gender roles. nonbinary upholds gender and keeps it from being able to be abolished. i don’t support that.

i think man and woman only exists as someone’s sex. trans people and intersex people exist, and may experience social dysphoria due to sex dysphoria. i think abolishing gender will make it easier on them both. i also think abolishing nonbinary as a concept will help nonbinary trans people, and if they wish to identify as “other” then that’s valid, as i don’t think that enforces gender like the nonbinary concept does. nonbinary as a concept inherently relies on gender and gender roles, such as men being masculine, dominant, sexual, non-emotional, etc., and the segregation of men and women (sex) to exist. nonbinary as someone who experiences atypical dysphoria? i don’t think that relies on gender to exist, therefore i support it.

i think someone who is born with a man’s body and has no dysphoria is a man, and someone who is born with a woman’s body and has no dysphoria is a woman. i use man and woman lightly, as i don’t think gender exists. an intersex person makes things more complicated, but ultimately they exhibit primarily one set of sex characteristics over the other, so if they’re nondysphoric, they would be that sex. anyone can be androgynous and display masculine and feminine traits. nonbinary as a concept itself is flawed due to that, as there’s nothing that would make someone nonbinary other than identifying as such, which proves absolutely nothing, and it insinuates that feminine or androgynous men and masculine or androgynous women don’t exist. once again, i use nonbinary to refer to it as a concept, not nonbinary trans people.

being uncomfortable with gender and thus identifying as nonbinary, i think is enforcing gender roles and gender. to abolish such a thing, you have to identify with it despite that and make it where there’s no longer a distinction between man and woman, in the area of gender.

social dysphoria is about being perceived as a certain sex making you uncomfortable. it is inherently linked to sex dysphoria. simply being uncomfortable with gender doesn’t make someone trans, because gender doesn’t exist and being uncomfortable with not fitting into a box is normal. if you’re uncomfortable with being seen as male or female due to how gender is treated in society, then isn’t it better to continue to identify with your birth sex and fight against such concepts? isn’t rejecting either only enforcing the idea that they exist in the first place? isn’t saying you’re neither male or female due to not fitting into gender roles enforcing them? isn’t saying you’re neither male or female due to not identifying with gender enforcing them? to reject gender requires you to recognize that gender exists, which is the opposite of what people claim to want. to abolish gender requires the ignoring of gender, to behave however you want and present however you want, whether or not it correlates with how your sex is “”supposed”” to be. abolishing the line of how people are supposed to be abolishes gender. creating new genders enforces that.

any civil input is welcome. any civil debating is welcome. being rude is not welcome. i tried my best to articulate things in a way to get my point across. once again, i support people behaving and presenting however they want and i support nonbinary trans people, but i don’t support nonbinary.

additionally, bisexuality inherently includes all and gender, given that it’s fake, doesn’t factor into things whatsoever. there’s only two sexes, and intersex is a mutation, not a third sex. even if it was considered a third sex, bisexuals are attracted to both sexes, and intersex is a combination of the two sexes, thus bisexuals still being attracted to it.

also be aware that i’m saying all of this as someone who identifies with the agender label. but i don’t identify as it because, as you’ve read, i think it’s regressive and enforces gender, and i’m nondysphoric, so using such a label would be disrespectful to trans people.

[jojotier]

I was looking at your post on ABO stuff and it made me think of stuff like soulmate AUs and that weird Hanahaki Disease thing... I always thought those were kinda dumb, too :/

Honestly, I think the Hanahaki Disease and Soulmate aus are at least passable- sure they can be generic as hell and its silly and dumb, and mostly wishful romantic fairytale thinking, but you can still do something with them relatively easily, and I do enjoy a good bit of silly fairytale nonsense from time to time

A/B/O on the other hand is fucking detestable, and the mere sight of it makes me recoil.

However, I’m a firm believer that almost anything can be done well if enough thought and planning is put into it. And I mean anything. 

So tl;dr of the masterpost I’m leaving below the read more: I personally find hanahaki disease and soulmate aus to be extremely promising and will leave some ways you can twist them into something more interesting.

A/B/O on the other hand, I hate with a fucking passion because it has some of the worst parts of humanity etched into it, and is generally used for all the wrong reasons- though I can see it working, if you’re really fucking careful and put a lot of thought and effort into developing it, and if you have good reason for it. I’ll leave some ideas below for tips on how you might be able to pull off an a/b/o au, even if i probably wouldnt touch it with a five foot pole

So before anything, there’s a couple ways to personalize a soulmate or hanahaki disease au:

- tailor it specifically to the fandom you’re writing for (for example, a stand that causes hanahaki disease so the user tries to gain control of the person’s heart by trying to convince them that he can ‘save them’ by taking the disease ridden heart away for jojo’s) - take the idea and giving it a twist (soulmates doesn’t necessarily mean romantic partner and your soulmate can be the person you beat the shit out of, a platonic friend, a government scheme trying to keep the masses compliant, etc)

- try to base ideas in reality- exploring the cultural and societal norms, including alternate histories and alternate social movements centered around the existence of something like soulmates being common for instance. how would soulmates, particularly if you find an enemy soldier is yours, play into how a war is conducted? are soulmates to be trusted in battle? how does the political and social climate change during things such as the suffrage movement or during industrialization? or you can come up with the science behind hanahaki disease and come up with an entire slew of research and studies for it. what medications are available to lessen the symptoms? are there alternate strains? people who are immune? where does hanahaki disease come from, and has it been part of human history for long?

With these ideas, they seem shallow and silly on the surface (and there’s nothing wrong with silly and shallow, if it’s done well and is inoffensive; sometimes i just need a good fairytale bullshit fix of flower tattoos appearing on your skin when your gf is near) but there’s still an underlying potential that makes them worthwhile to explore and keep around, especially if you mix and match with different genres like fantasy, modern magic, solarpunk, scifi, horror, thriller, etc!! 

But the thing that pisses me off about A/B/O is that 1) that’s not how humans fucking work, nor do a lot of animal species, and it simplifies the complex social and societal structures associated with people, 

2) 9/10 it’s an excuse to write men into the societal roles of nuclear parents with things like mpreg and assbabies and heat without female characters ‘getting in the way’, 

3) if you even decide to explore the social and political aspects of the population being separated into 3 races positions in power society with rigid norms of ‘this person has to be Aggressive and Dominant because its In Their Nature and everyone Will Submit’ and whatever the fuck, thats just… wrong on so many levels. trying to explore A/B/O while romanticizing it in the same breath is the absolute worst crime you can commit, especially if your A/B/O has extremely rigid class structure and ‘behaviors’ associated with all the classes’ biology that are enforced and seen as good things. 

At it’s worst, A/B/O can become an allegory in favor of racism, sexism, classism, and the fetishization of gay men.

 Do the writers of these aus want it to come off that way? I doubt that many of them do, and I doubt it’s intentional- but when you read a summary that says that ‘oh this character is an OMEGA who SNEAKS INTO an ALPHAS ONLY parlor, can this sheep in wolf’s clothing hide their secret??’ it’s impossible not to draw parallels to Jim Crow. When there’s a summary about how Character A needs to find an alpha so their heat can be taken care of, it’s impossible not to think of the seme/uke dynamic that its upholding. when you see a story thats full of male characters where their dynamics are ‘explored’ while the female characters get brushed to the side with no mention of their apparent status in this society, it just highlights how much the author wants the female characters out of the way

Do I think that A/B/O can be done well? Yes. When I say I believe almost anything can work, I mean anything. 

Here’s my tips for attempting to write a successful A/B/O:

- Do some fucking research before anything. Research is key to both improving your writing skills and finding new ideas that people might not have looked at before. If you want a lighter slice of life au, I suggest researching how best to build a culture and how historical influences weave their way into present customs. If you want something a little heavier, start researching different social movements and learn about how social reform is undertaken. How does a social movement form? Are there any technological advances you think might be inspired in an A/B/O world?

- Unless the people in the A/B/O aren’t human, for the love of fuck don’t make anything specific to their biology. If you have A/B/O in your au because there are things like werewolves or vampires or some other mythical creature, then there is a little more leniency, since then you can make an actual case that you’re making a couple behaviors actually part of their biology. Even then though, you’re thin ice, which brings me to the next important point…

- SUBTLETY. Just make it another part of society, like you would with a gay or PoC character. Don’t hammer the entire dynamic into your readers’ faces unless you’re prepared to do actual research and definitely not unless you are 100% dismantling why harmful societal structures are bullshit. This can be done in a few ways, such as developing a sort of culture around each of the roles (for example, maybe Alphas traditionally favor spicy foods as a test of strength or tend to steal bites of their partner’s food, or maybe Omegas tend to prefer sweet foods and wear patterns). You can make people of all castes equal across all fields (an equal amount of alpha and omega politicians and ceos for instance), and you can show characters with diverse tastes that don’t fit what might be stereotypical of them (alphas cuddling stuffed animals, omegas with a love of going to a fight club and beating the shit out of each other, etc). Don’t be afraid to let identities intersect- trans omegas, aro/ace alphas, etc. 

- The final and most important point- Have A Fucking Reason For Including A/B/O or Making An A/B/O au. 

Do you want a/b/o in your au because you feel it will give an extra dimension that sets apart a supernatural creatures’ social dynamics from human social dynamics? Cool! That’s some chill worldbuilding you can pull off! Do you want to explore how a social movement forms and how to challenge an oppressive society? Neat! Just be careful not to go too far and do your research! Want to see how x character would react and navigate the world with the cultures associated with A/B/O? Want to do an entire genre swap where A/B/O is the norm of a dystopia, or horror based, or a sci-fi where AIs are programmed with it and have to overcome the structure to develop a social structure of their own, or anything of the like? Go for it! 

Do you want to have a character be seen as suuuuuuper weak and feminine but!!! They aren’t actually because girl power they’re just the same as anyone else and can run with big strong ones like the alphas so they’re not like other omegas? Want to get rid of those pesky girls so they don’t get in the way of your ships? Want your two gay characters to have a super imbalanced relationship with one character being aggressive because it’s just their nature? Want your ~sinful gay babies~ to still be a nuclear family and have 2.5 biological children? Want to explore things like racism without that pesky need to research anything ever? NO. NO NO NO. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW. You better fucking not. 

So yea wow this post ended up longer than intended but here you go!

[amcnh]

Moses Sumney

“Am I vital if my heart is idle? Am I doomed?” “If lovelessness is godlessness, will you cast me to the wayside?” “Cradle me so I can see if I’m doomed.” Moses Sumney, his song “Doomed,” and the album it’s off – Aromanticism ­ - fuck me all the way up. I could say it better, maybe, but that’s just what’s happening. I listen to music pretty much all day, every day. Shit makes me cry and feel, but I rarely ever relate. I can recognize – “Oh, that’s a nice song about love!” and “Wow, they are really going through it in that breakup, huh?” Very infrequently, staggeringly rarely, do I hear something and think, “Ah, yeah, that’s me.” What Moses explores on this, his debut record, is me all damn over. It’s not neat or fun casual convo, but the interrogation of loneliness and solitude and incapacity for romantic love is something that is very #relatable to me. Heartless folk rarely get our songs, so, atop appreciating the record as the gorgeous, nuanced thing of music it is, I’m thankful for its objective.

To accompany the release of the album, Moses posted a note on his Tumblr. In it, he says something that could come from my diary if I kept one and was a more elegant writer: “Many of the origin stories about the inception of our species establish this blueprint for coexistence – that every body has an equal and opposite body, a destined companion without which we are incomplete. Our modern construct of romance still upholds this paradigm; romantic love is the paramount prize of existence. But what if I can’t access that prize?” He further writes, “This isn’t protest music, however, as much as it is process music. It’s the 2am sweat you wake up in, processing that lonesomeness might not just be a transitory hallway you’re passing through en route to inevitable partnership.” (Everything I read about him discussing the album makes me pause and sigh a little nervously) He jokingly/yet seriously suggests, “Alternative titles for Aromanticism could be: Narcissus; Don’t Touch Me; Please Touch Me; Sure, Let’s Touch Each Other but Please Leave Right After We Cum; Grey A; It’s Not You, It’s Me; It’s Not You – Actually, It’s Not Anyone; It’s Not Me, It’s My Childhood.”

Journalists love that he made this record. They – people, in general, really - get wild uncomfortable by the shit Moses is saying – both on the actual record and in discussing it. Me? I relish. I want to print out all his interviews and tape them across my walls to remind myself that, “Yeah, it’s cool.” A smattering of quotes from various conversations give deep, full detail to Aromanticism and make me scream in accordance, so here are some:

+ “When you tell people, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever fall in love with anyone’, one of the first things they say is, ‘Oh you’ll find someone’, which is so patronizing.” “Why can’t I know that? And why can’t I challenge it critically? I needed to release a work in order to have it be a conversation.”

+ “One of the many manifestations of social oppression is the idea that you have to prove that you’re one of the good ones, in order for humanity to be extended to you and people that look like you. Whereas I don’t have to prove anything and it should be OK to be anything. It should be OK to fit into the stereotype and it should be OK to not fit into the stereotype.”

+ “I wanted to write music that acknowledged the complexity of desiring something that maybe you didn’t have or something you didn’t fully relate to, or just for recognizing you’re on the periphery of something but not in a way that implies you’re too cool for it or too good for it. I wanted to be really honest.”

+ “Societal norms around romance to me felt really constricting and very narrow, especially for a time that feels like it’s so obsessed with dismantling societal practices that are considered the right way to do anything. But I feel like the conversation around romance was still stiff. I wanted to observe that, obviously through my personal life, but I was thinking about it in a social way. And to just kind of write about something that no one else is really writing about. Obviously people have written about dark shit or sad feelings or whatever forever, but I wanted to contextualize it in a way that felt new.”

+ “Saying the words ‘the world needs more love’ — using those words as a political device to imply that love all round is going to produce equality — is ignorant and unrealistic. The problem with the world is not that people who are different don’t have enough ‘love’ for each other. The problem is that the people with power insist on using it, and maintaining it for themselves. Ultimately, when people say ‘we need more love,’ what they are telling oppressed people is that they need to love the person that’s killing them. And what do they have to gain from that? A clear conscience? Some promise that in the afterlife, after they’ve been murdered by the people taking resources from them, that they’ll go to heaven because they have warmth in their hearts? It [goes back to] what we were talking about earlier with “Quarrel” — someone can love you and still be oppressing you, still not listen to your voice. Emphasizing love is a waste of time. What we need to emphasize is the dissemination of power, and a deconstruction of hierarchical structures that keep people at the bottom, and keep others at the top.”

+ “I think that romance is very obviously a political tool, and a capitalist device. I’ve even thought recently, it’s quite good for the economy: the amount people spend on weddings and gifts. Also, [romance] just can’t be separated from a patriarchal structure — like the idea that in a homosexual couple, one person is the masculine, and the other is the feminine. Ultimately we keep going back to those two figures on the wedding cake as the archetype, even for alternative relationships.”

+ “When you’re conditioned to look at something as normal, the sadness that can come from not being able to obtain that is super taxing on your mental health… It’s really unhealthy, the idea that you need another half to make you whole, but also I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to totally self-isolate. There needs to be a balance, and I don’t think there is, currently.”

Aromanticism was a long time coming, and it’s wholly his. He hesitated working with labels because he wanted the control. His sound isn’t definable. It’s this AND that. The dismissal of genre enhances his message to tremendous effect. Lyrically, it’s all concise. He has a degree in poetry that aids in his writing. His voice floats and takes you everywhere. When he sings, “Can I tell you a secret?” on “Plastic,” you’re on the edge of whatever you’re on, shouting, “YES!”

The record is only thirty-four minutes long, but it feels both longer and somehow so fucking brief. To Stereogum, he said, “I just want people to know it’s OK to be alone. I’m not saying it’s easy or it’s too difficult, because it can be both. I’m saying it’s an option. It’s not a choice that has to last forever either. I just want people explore being alone if they feel it suits them. There is more to life than who you’re with.” I tend to stray from sentiment, but it means a lot. This shit’s a journey – we can all agree. Aromanticism is my companion.

@anaserhall

[chal-converts-archive]

So I’ve definitely been having some stupid brain stuff about gender things + religion and I have no idea what the hell to think anymore. Below the cut is a lot of rambling about highly personal garbage – tw for dysphoria, body talk, survivor stuff, transphobia. That said, I’m not posting anything I’m not okay to talk about, so it’s okay to rb or interact with me on this stuff (I am, of course, assuming a modicum of respect and basic human decency here, though.)

Some background: Back in the day, when I was a wee queer thing, I had crushing body dysphoria related to my uterus (primarily) and other issues related to what I’m just gonna call survivor-induced dysphoria, which was all stuff like, “gee, I hate that estrogen doesn’t give me the same muscle-building capacity as testosterone, because what if I need to fight or defend myself?” as one example. (I give that example because it’s the least graphic, tbh.)

If I had to psychoanalyze myself (hah) I would probably say that while the uterus-related issues would have happened regardless, I’m unsure about the other issues. It’s entirely possible that simply living in a culture that is positively saturated with violence against women would have triggered it anyway, but I have no idea what would have happened if I could somehow have been truly sheltered. It’s super irrelevant because even if it was initially drawn out because of trauma, it’s not like I could just undo it by healing. There are some things that trauma just permanently changes about a person, and healing means learning to navigate the world with those things rather than trying to go back to some nebulous “past” self. Besides, there would still be the uterus issues.

Point being, regardless of how my dysphoria came about, I will 100% defend it as valid because it sure as hell was real when I was experiencing it. We’re talking anxiety attack-inducing, depression-triggering, self-harm-triggering, and suicidal ideation inducing levels of dysphoria here.

This was all body-related.

The social stuff came about pretty much entirely because society likes to conflate sex and gender. That is, all of my issues were related to being “female,” rather than being gendered as a woman. However, I obviously associated being gendered as a woman with the body issues, and so I did end up experiencing social dysphoria from being misgendered as a woman – but primarily because I knew it was based on this body form that I did not feel comfortable or safe in.

I especially associated gender-based harassment with my physical dysphoria, because yay survivor issues + trans feels. Ergo, catcalling could mess me up for days because it hit on both survivor triggers as well as dysphoria triggers. Even stuff that was more innocent, like regular flirting from guys would generally hit on this too.

I had very little control over the physical stuff for a long time (do you know how blinking hard it is to get a hysterectomy? Even a medically necessary one??) and so my gender presentation being one of the few things I could control meant that my gender pendulum swung all the way over to male for a while. It’s also worth pointing out that until I was 21, I really didn’t understand what “non-binary” even was, so “flamboyantly gay dude” was about as close as I thought I could get for a while.

I did end up finally getting a badly-needed hysterectomy when I was 23, however. And what happened after that was very interesting. I slowly started feeling a lot more comfortable presenting as a woman, and I ended up doing so more and more. In fact, at some point that I’m not sure I could entirely pin down, I ended up feeling a lot more comfortable presenting as a woman than as a man. (This is obviously assuming that a more non-binary-reading appearance was off the table.)

Probably the true end of my presenting as male except once in a blue moon happened during the last two years of school, when I started wearing a headscarf full time.

By this point, my dysphoria had basically been addressed. The social dysphoria evaporated without the underlying body dysphoria to trigger it, and without a uterus and having been on testosterone for a number of years, my body dysphoria had abated entirely.

Left entirely to my own devices without any dysphoria to dictate my presentation, I apparently gravitate towards being very femme.

The thing about it is, I realized I still didn’t like or trust men and didn’t like being segregated with them instead of women. I also really hated having to be a guy around “other” guys. This had been a preferable solution to being hit on when I was still experiencing dysphoria, but without it? I missed the company of “other” women, and I missed the clothes and I missed being able to navigate the world in a feminine manner. Even being around men as a “woman” was finally bearable, because I had both addressed my dysphoria as well as reached an age where men are less likely to pull shit.

It’s also worth noting that I still frequently presented in a way that would read genderqueer to anyone paying attention, but that because of my build and my scarf, this usually got interpreted as “queer woman,” which I just… couldn’t be bothered to be upset about most of the time.

In fact, over time, I built up a tolerance to being misgendered, such that now it just doesn’t faze me at all. I have likened this to how I got used to my hard contacts in the past – you literally have to build up callouses on the backs of your eyelids. It hurts like hell for a while, and then you just sort of stop noticing it.

But the headscarf thing deserves some closer examination, because it pulled me down a very different path.

Wearing a scarf changed how I viewed my body, and how I presented myself to others. I initially started out dressing more modestly out of respect to other women who veil, because I didn’t want other people to get the wrong impression. I didn’t see it as any sort of necessary restriction for modesty’s sake, but rather a necessary component of respect if I was going to dress in a way that was likely to get me read as (in all likelihood) Muslim or Jewish.

What I didn’t anticipate is how transformative this would prove to be.

Covering my hair and dressing modestly changed a lot about how I view myself, my body, and even my broader worldview. I began to value my privacy, especially my bodily privacy, a lot more, and I quickly realized that covering up was one way of reclaiming my body from society. Because I was no longer having to be so on guard all the time about it, I was able to relax about a number of other things, which in turn really helped my self-image. I also found that I received a lot more respect from men, and while that has a really gross basis, it nevertheless has made my social anxiety go way down. And, because I felt it important to learn more about veiling traditions more broadly, I ended up listening to a lot more religious women’s thoughts, which has definitely added some nuance to my viewpoints.

During my conversion process, tznius has flowed pretty well into this – I won’t pretend like I’m 100% there, but it something I meet a fair amount of the time at this point, and I’ve found it to be a very good thing for me. Tznius, specifically, has also adjusted my style, and I’ve gone away from a lot of the more in-your-face-queer looks.

All of this is good, right?

Well, mostly.

Something I’ve been running into more and more lately is this feeling that if I can dress tznius and fit into being a woman (or close enough, anyway), I should. That if it’s no longer excruciating for me to wear skirts – in fact, if I actually prefer them, which I do at this point – I have an obligation to present this way. I’m sure there are even those who would argue that this is a “gift” – the ability to return to my assigned sex without pain or dysphoria.

I… don’t know what to do with this, tbh. I know a lot of it is internalized misogynistic and transphobic garbage, just repackaged. I know that, and yet I still can’t shake it.

I think part of why I can’t shake this feeling, though, is that there is a valid aspect to it, which is authenticity. Right now, for whatever reason, my most authentic-feeling gender presentation is this sort of “religious femme” thing – which ends up helping me access a sense of genderlessness that I otherwise am utterly barred from. Since that feels the best and is the most correct for me, at this time, then I feel like my duty is not so much to uphold a violently transphobic and sexist system, but rather to be as true to myself as possible. If that truth happens to map onto societal expectations in a weird, roundabout way, well… idk. I guess that’s a big part of what I’m struggling with here. Is it really my truth? Or is it that I’ve so deeply internalized this stuff that it feels “right”?