the-boxy-journals - Tumblr blog

[the-boxy-journals]

my transmasculine butt, playing a female character, in a dating sim, based on a reality TV show, that separates participants by gender

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(TW under the cut for implied details of IRL hate crimes towards transgender people and their loved ones)

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I have a question about making my comic posts more accessible (particularly when using screen readers).

I am starting to add detailed transcripts to my comic posts. But they may become very long walls of text, which could be hard to edit in the single-line alt text field, and may take up a lot of space on a user’s timeline.

Is it okay to place the transcript under a cut, and/or say in the alt text “transcript included below”? Or is that less accessible?

I’ll include a short test case below.

Transcript below the cut.

A photo of my cat’s face. She has short black-and-white fur, with a little black diamond on her nose. Just the tip of her tongue is sticking out.

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Context:

For the first part of my life, I was a “shy, quiet girl” with intense social anxiety. Sometimes the world was confusing, but my strategy was to say nothing and pretend like I understood what was happening. But that could result in doing something ridiculous, or avoiding the task that confused me.

When I was 17, I was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s and put on anti-anxiety medication. Now I am mostly free from social anxiety (though my body sometimes betrays me and starts to shake). I’m learning to ask lots of questions when I feel stuck on a task, instead of avoiding the task. But I feel like it’s unmasking, outing myself, and worry about annoying people with trivial questions, or sounding stupid with obvious ones.

I imagine a neurotypical person, without a disability, would be better at filtering important and trivial questions.

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A year ago, I spent 3 weeks in residential eating disorder treatment (basically like a mental hospital specific to EDs) followed by 2 months in a partial hospitalization program (basically 40 hr/week group therapy).

It stabilized my physical health, and taught me some useful skills (mostly DBT and distress tolerance). It was certainly my coziest and most constructive “mental hospital” experience. Most of the staff and patients were great. I was comforted to meet a number of transmasc patients like me (we were treated well), and even a couple AMAB patients.

But the program was not designed to treat ARFID. I didn’t need mandatory group body image counseling and felt guilty sitting in on the vulnerable discussion there. The root causes for me- sensory aversion, executive dysfunction, and a phobia of food contamination- were barely addressed.

It was not made for autistic patients either. I had some of the worst autistic burnout of my life. The programs were nonstop and changed last minute. We were locked out of our bedrooms during the day, and monitored even in the bathrooms. I was masking to strangers 24/7 for weeks until it broke me.

Not to discourage use of resources like this, if you or your doctor decide you need it. I just wish I had access to ED treatment that understood ARFID and patients on the spectrum.

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This image about audio processing seemed to resonate with folks on Twitter before the Musk-pocalypse:

I also made this some years before that. Today, I might describe it more as a radio receiver that hops from one frequency to the next mid-sentence without warning. Like a radio scanning.

Before I had my ASD diagnosis, I was diagnosed with Sensory Processing (or Integration) Disorder, which is why I use those tags.

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Miscellaneous autistic things (probably drawn in the late 2010s)

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Not sure if a symptom of my autism, or if I just had a different concept of what qualifies as water

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This page was drawn in January 2018. I was feeling conflicted about whether I should start taking testosterone. I imagined the future happy man I could become. But I also remembered the affection I received as a little girl and feared I wouldn’t receive that affection any more if I wasn’t a girl. (The robot picture is referring to a dark classic Transformers comic, about two mortal enemies, Ratchet and Galvatron, being fused together in a sort of transporter accident against their will.)

A month later I was hospitalized for about five days for depression. (For many big reasons, only one of them being this struggle with gender identity).

Four months after that, I started testosterone. Previously I had drawn myself being forced back into a creepy zombie-like cocoon I was trying to emerge from. Now, I drew myself emerging from a cocoon.

I discontinued testosterone after 28 months. I still have permanent changes such as facial hair and a deeper voice. I don’t know what to call my gender at this point (nonbinary? genderfluid? bearded lady?) but I am much more at peace with it now. I’m also happy to share that I am now with a nonbinary partner who fully embraces my gender identity.

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Someone at my university held the door for me, but it would have meant going through in the wrong direction. I didn’t want to be rude but didn’t want to break the rules. (2011)

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Watching raindrop circles darken the sidewalk.

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Pinned Post!

Content Warnings

This blog contains honest- and sometimes heavy- content about mental health and queer identity.

Minors are discouraged from interacting with and reading this blog.

I’ve done my best to use tags that improve filtering of certain triggers. Let me know if I can add or improve any.

Possible triggering queer content: gender dysphoria, description of gendered body parts, injection and needles, hate crime mention

Possible triggering mental health content: depression, delusions, derealization, disordered eating, voluntary hospitalization, intrusive thoughts, s*lf h*rm, s**cidal id**tion and behavior

Other possible triggering content: parent with cancer, legal substance use, pet loss

Below cut: About Me and Posts So Far

About Me

* 29yo nonbinary AFAB with masculine traits from HRT

* Not picky about pronouns. They/them is fine.

* Started college full time at 15, dropped out twice, graduated nine years later

* Diagnosed with: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), ADHD (inattentive type), OCD, depression, anxiety

* Past diagnoses I had before ASD: Asperger’s Syndrome, Pragmatic Language Disorder, Sensory Processing/Integration Disorder

* I may post content from dark times in my life. But rest assured I am currently stable, medicated, and in a safe place. I have a solid social and medical support network.

* Insert obligatory “relating to me doesn’t make you neurodivergent/trans, and not relating me doesn’t make you neurotypical/cis” disclaimer here. Every person with my condition(s) is different.

Posts So Far

No Associated Date

Raindrops on the sidewalk

Miscellaneous autism things

Audio processing

Too-loud and too-quiet autism

2011 (high school graduation)

Holding the door

2015-2017 (computer science college, internship, and library job)

Low spoons

Fluff class and repeated class

Erdly

2018 (hospitalized, start T, mom gets cancer, college graduation)

Gender conflict and cocoon

Toss me a floaty

2019 (first year of independent living)

No more

Rearrange furniture!

Light bulbs and paper

Interrupting

Water

2022 (ED treatment)

ARFID and ED treatment

2023

Don’t rock the boat in Oklahoma

Dating sim

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Reminds me of 2019, when I’d been on testosterone for over a year, and was giving gig work on a pet-sitting app a try. I met my client, and we exchanged info, but just before I left they asked about my pronouns. I said he/him. They laughed it off, in an “obviously we’re all cis here” way, but said their kid had told them it was polite to ask just in case. I smiled and agreed in a “yes of course, I was definitely born male” way and we never spoke of it again.

There was also the guy on the bus who saw me holding flowers (bought myself to decorate my apartment), and imagined a whole story about me being a cis guy in the doghouse with my girlfriend. That’s a fun story for a different post

A visitor came up to me at work and thanked me for wearing a he/him pin and “being an ally to the trans community” and “how important it is that cis people normalize sharing pronouns” and BRUH I am SOARING rn

And transphobes still be out here saying “wE CaN aLWaYs tEll”

This just in: “Trans Man Rolls a Nat 20 For Stealth”

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Living on my own for the first time. Autism and inattentive ADHD fighting for control of my brain. (2019)

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I was 24 years old and still living with my parents. Finally, I was given a job that paid more than $600/month, and was able to move out to live as an independent adult for the first time. I felt relief. (February 16, 2019)

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Difficulty processing the cadence of a conversation and adding to it at just the right moment so I don't talk over anyone. I was never good at feeling how fast I was playing the piano either, maybe that's related?

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floatie (July 26, 2018)