#spectrums

[transbookoftheday]

Spectrums: Autistic Transgender People in Their Own Words by Maxfield Sparrow

Written by autistic trans people from around the world, this vital and intimate collection of personal essays reveals the struggles and joys of living at the intersection of neurodivergence and gender diversity.

Weaving memories, poems and first-person narratives together, these stories showcase experiences of coming out, college and university life, accessing healthcare, physical transition, friendships and relationships, sexuality, pregnancy, parenting, and late life self-discovery, to reveal a rich and varied tapestry of life lived on the spectrums.

With humour and personal insight, this anthology is essential reading for autistic trans people, and the professionals supporting them, as well as anyone interested in the nuances of autism and gender identity.

[stoicmike]

The color is the mood because we are the creatures of waves and spectrums. -- Michael Lipsey

[radiomogai]

Acannispec, Acannixspec, & Acannixual

quick coining three terms that we need

Acannispec: the acannibalistic spectrum, or, a spectrum of orientations where one does not experience cannibalistic attraction. an aspec term for cannibalistic attraction

Acannixspec: the acannixual spectrum, or, a spectrum of orientations where one does not experience cannixual attraction. an aspec term for cannixual attraction

Acannixual: an orientation describing one who does not experience cannixual attraction

feel free to make flags, just let us know if you do

@webby-mogai @horrorgores @the-cannibal-archive @tertiary-attraction-archive

[chupacabraatemybrother]

I think a major bug in human interaction and misunderstanding (which leads to hostility) is due to black and white or binary thinking. I also think that this type of thinking is a very human trait that comes to us inherently, and if we're not careful enough we can find ourselves slipping into it at any time.

I was thinking about that scene in Star Wars Revenge of the Sith when Obi-Wan says to Anakin "only a Sith deals in absolutes." It's really funny because in that moment Obi-Wan is also using an absolute, thus negating his statement: Obi-Wan is definitely not a Sith.

Humans do this all the time in so many places, especially places like Tumblr in which discourse is high. People pick and choose which binaries they will reject and which ones they will embrace and enforce. On Tumblr for example, which is a primarily liberal space, we're pretty much in agreement that things such as disability, autism, gender, etc, are not black and white binaries and there is so much nuance, not even among a gradient but among a matrix.

These same people will then turn around and use other binaries such as rich versus poor, Democrat versus Republican, urban versus rural, etc. (I could write a whole post on how liberal culture both places rural living and being "one with nature" on a pedestal, while also vilifying the people that already live here and our established practices of living in nature, including [especially] hunting).

An example of this selective thinking I've witnessed is the whole discourse seen in some lgbtqa+ spaces surrounding the inclusion of Ace/aro individuals: people that don't neatly fit the binary (ex: aro but het) are considered with suspicion.

I've also heard stories of masc non-binary people not fitting in in various genderqueer spaces because they come across as too masculine to be perceived as gender non-conforming, but oddly enough I've minimally encountered the same issue when it's someone being femme.

TL:DR; everyone falls into the binary thinking trap sometimes because it is a inherently human trait. However there will always be someone who doesn't fit neatly into any of the binaries that you have assigned to the world, and people need to be prepared to face and challenge these assumptions as they become a exposed to different ways of thinking and existing in this world. There is no one right way to be a human, and people on the internet need to stop acting like there is.

[created-creator]

sometimes i try to convince myself that i’m not really on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums,

and then i’ll watch reality dating shows the way other people watch horror movies.

i’ll be pausing every few seconds, i’ll get jumpy and kinda queasy and have to turn it off before it’s over.

that’s not required to be ace and/or aro, but damn, that’s gotta mean SOMETHING about me, right?

[leptrois]

Gender Juxtaposition Diagrams (GJD) by saintmons

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

Exomav Pride Flag

Exomav: exomaverique and/or exomaverine; exobinary maverique identity; abinary-spectral maveriquity/maveriqueness; exospec maverinity/abiaspec maveriquinity; maverine exobinarity and/or maverique exobinariness.

Exobinary is a term for non-binary people relating to having experiences of genders that are completely outside of or independent of the gender binary or anything related to it. It's similar to abinary.

[keeruub]

Collages for my album MIN

Green ghillie suits, pink spectrums, technology and teeth

[hobohobgoblim]

[neopronounsmybelovaed]

friend of mine, i want to tell you that you do not have to know what your gender is.

"man" and "woman" don't have to make sense to you. even new words, the ones we made to make sense to more of us, like "demigirl" or "autigender" or "bigender" or "neutrois," don't have to make sense to you.

you don't have to know what you like to be called, or what you like to wear, or what you like your body to feel like. gender is a journey, and you don't have to know where you're going to end up.

if you're lost, find yourself in the little things. (like we autistics always do.)

[...]

friend of mine, i want to tell you that you do not have to make sense to other people.

if you're safe, if you're comfortable, if you want, you can tell people what you are, or what you want to be, or what makes you light up. but all of those things are for you- never for them.

it is a privilege for someone to know you in your entirety. you get to decide who has that privilege.

friend of mine, i want to tell you that they cannot keep us down.

they can try to stop us flapping and humming and feeling and being, but they can't. they won't.

they can try to stop us from learning who we are or being who we are, but they can't. they won't.

they cannot stop us from being loud.

--ren koloni (they/it), "a letter to a friend"

(Spectrums: Autistic Transgender People in Their Own Words, Maxfield Sparrow)

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I love things that are halfway between other things, like sporks, interrobangs, ligers

[donaviolet]

This explains a lot

[embervoices]

It's funny, I feel like I spent a lot of time pointing out that there's almost always a third path of some kind of balance between two things being treated as a false dichotomy, and I'm just waiting for someone to tell me I'm politically a moderate or centrist.

But I'm not.

Because, at least in the US, "Moderate" and "Centrist" haven't actually described finding the necessary balances on various axes of ethical philosophy in general in a very long time - if they ever did. They're people trying to hold some kind of middle ground between what I find fairly reasonable and compassionate in ideal, if a bit lacking in practice, and what I find downright abhorrent in ideal and cruel in practice.

It's not ethically centered or moderate to try to hold a line between "Everyone is allowed to exist" and "Except those people, who we've decided aren't people". "Everyone is allowed to exist" is already a centered place. Pulling it off center, drawing a line at one ridiculous extreme, and then drawing a line halfway between the two and saying "This is the middle now" isn't ethics. It's barely geometry.

But we don't really get anywhere coherent by turning everything into a false dilemma just so we can demand everyone be "with us or against us" even when that doesn't actually make sense.

Yes, there's no middle ground between "Live or Die" but few things are actually that clear-cut, and it's not actually valid reasoning to try to reduce everything to that for the sake of feeling like we have the moral high ground. We're not solving any practical problems with that shit. We are, at most, soothing our feeling of overwhelm from seeing how big the problems really are.

And they ARE big. Far too big for any one person to solve. Any one person has got to pick their battles, narrow their focus, to be effective. That doesn't mean we as a society have to pick our battles - that's another false dilemma. Nothing gets solved by only one person, so the limits of a single person to solve things are only relevant to that single person. All solutions to big problems are, by definition, group efforts.

So... yeah, being centered is important to me. Being centered in the things that actually fucking matter.

The axes I care about being centered on are things like:

Compassion and Wisdom

Freedom and Equality

Individual and Community

Functional and Ideal

Accommodations and Boundaries

And the distribution of resources and responsibilities.

In all things, moderation - even moderation.

[radiomogai]

Immoaffectis orientations

some orientations for immoaffectis attraction, just to fill in some gaps. anyone's welcome to make flags for these, just let us know if you do

Alloimmoaffectis: an orientation in which one experiences immoaffectis attraction

Irrelimmoaffectis: an orientation in which one does not experience immoaffectis attraction due to it not being applicable to them. for example, not being immortal, and thus not knowing what this type of attraction feels like

Aimmoaffectis: an orientation in which immoaffectis attraction applies to someone but they experience little to none of it

Aimmospec: the aspec term for immoaffectis attraction. the spectrum of feeling little to no immoaffectis attraction, despite it applying to oneself

@tertiary-attraction-archive @alteraffectis

[cosima-nova]

Absolutely living for all the folks in my life right now, who are in their 40’s and older who are figuring out their gender and/or sexual identities.

I am heart exploding, grinning so hard my face hurts, tears of joy ecstatic for them.

It is truly never too late. And for a lot of us, we had to crawl out from under deeply set beliefs/trauma/life shit to be able to finally sit in our true selves.

I’m just… so happy they got there.

[sjwallin]

Text:

once I was at the optometrist and he was measuring my ability to see colors and he said "the thing about biology is that nature doesn't really do binaries, only spectrums" and I think about that a lot