Just Another doll

I have a friend I know from when we were both 6. She is the only person living nearby and so she saw me go from walking through limping to wheelchair on a daily basis. I keep her updated on my health even tho we rarely hang out anymore. She was gonna come over yesterday and I had to cancel. She asked if I can’t hang out later that day. When I said i won’t feel better later, that if I feel that bad in the morning later will only get worse she got annoyed and “joked” that I’m just finding excuses. And I was surprised, she knows all about me being disabled after all? So, a bit taken aback, I told her it’s a normal thing for me.

“But you got the diagnosis now, aren’t you better?? I thought you’ll get better now”

Important detail: this is the kind of desk job where there’s no particular need to have a certain amount of people in the office at any given time. She just didn’t like me taking vacation days without advance notice because she thinks the basic principle of vacations is that you should give notice weeks in advance for that.

I told her that my chronic pain strikes without warning, and the number of sick days the company offers isn’t enough, so I have to spend my vacation days as extra sick days, and I don’t like that either.

So, naturally, every meeting she began pressuring me to see a doctor to get cured. I was pressured into disclosing to her a number of details about how I have tried a great many treatments, and that this is likely to be a lifelong problem for me. And anyway, if I’m still getting my work done, and she can’t name any specific problems caused by me using my vacation days like this, what’s the problem?

No, I couldn’t go to HR about this. I was already on thin ice with them after HR gave me some stern warnings not to be so “confrontational” about the CTO’s racism. I eventually had to find a new job.

but like…Becky, of course LGBTQ+ people existed before Stonewall. We’ve all existed since the beginning of time. But the movement got a shock to its senses, a jump-start, a rocket-into-space when that glass shattered via Marsha P. Johnson, and when Sylvia Rivera was up on-stage protesting guess who was on the sidelines heckling her?

Without a trans black woman, LGBT+ rights would not exist. Never forget. Never “pay it no mind”.

UwU

fun fact; kitty's doll has a trigger where if anyaone says uwu or owo around it, it responds with the same. anofur fun fact; kitty has a tendency to say the "kitty will x nyur y uwu" joke, especially when x and y make nyo sense

result; it gets frustrated every time, and generally responds with "what does that even mean?!?" after it's gotten itself caught in the joke by uwuing back

kitty's doll is incredibly cyute

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself. And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men. And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.