Aspen Not Poplar

for @morgwenmicrofic prompt: cage

I made a new flyer for my research project 📋

LINK TO THE SURVEY

The survey will be open until at least the end of 2026 if not beyond. Only these 14 measurements are required, all the others are optional:

If you have been on HRT for at least 3 years, have half an hour and a measuring tape, consider taking the survey!

If you don't qualify or don't feel up to participating feel free to share it :)

You may need to learn how to set up your paints and such… but this is what people did, live, while the show aired. That’s what the show was for. I had family members create lovely works of art they enjoyed, which I still have on my walls, because William Alexander and Bob Ross both said:

SCREW METICULOUS CLASSICAL ART PRACTICES — JUST GRAB A PALETTE KNIFE AND BIG OLD BRUSH AND PAINT!

They freed a whole generation of people who were taught to paint detail and realism and exact representation of reality — people who largely gave up this kind of thing because it got tedious.

I watched the joy of family members as they rediscovered art as a messy fun spontaneous half hour activity.

I do a lot of different crafts and arts, and nature is a big theme in everything I touch, whether it's painting, drawing, photography, embroidery, or poetry. Bob started me off with permission to be a beginner, to have fun with learning and experimentation and to treat it as play, not something to succeed or fail at. And that has become a critical part of my own art philosophy, as well as with learning any new skill. The curiosity and drive to learn and to grow, to experiment and try new things, should always be rewarded, and it pains me to see it often punished instead - many times, others say hurtful things or dismiss us and our journey entirely, and then we internalize that, and perpetuate it for them. Ask yourself: who does it serve?

If something doesn't turn out the way you wanted the first time, or the hundredth, it's okay. It might be frustrating, certainly, but what it is not is an indictment of your skills. In fact, falling short or 'failing' is an integral part of the learning process. And being hard on yourself, being ashamed, or accepting and internalizing shame and dislike from the overly harsh critiques of people who have either never been where you are or who have forgotten what it is like, does nothing to help your advancement or enjoyment of what you're trying to do. And if you are neither learning nor enjoying the journey, what is it for?

Similarly, if you try something and discover that you aren't impassioned by it, that's fine, and you have done a good thing by trying something new even if it didn't work out long term! Like any interpersonal relationship you might have, not every relationship with every medium will be a forever bond - and it's okay. That's natural, and it's not anything you have done wrong! Sometimes people grow apart. Sometimes our interest wanes and waxes in different areas over time. We might lose interest in a craft or medium and abandon it, but the skills we learned may serve us well in another pursuit later. And the door is rarely closed on what we love to do. Almost everything will be waiting patiently for you later if and when you choose to pick up the brush, the chisel, the camera, the needle and thread, or the pen once more.

That’s one question to ask, sure.

But when a little boy is being told by his mother to suck it up or else he’ll never be a real man?

That’s a woman placing that system’s constraints upon her son. She didn’t set it up any more than her son did, or her father did. But she is being the enforcer of the system.

We need to stop talking about patriarchal systems as though the current men who live under it made it, and we also need to stop talking about patriarchal systems as though they are ever only enforced by men.

from The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

When a man earnestly tries to verbalize the immense pain and suffering he experiences under patriarchy, and your response is a witty quip that shifts the conversation away from vulnerability towards mockery and blames him for the existence of the system both of you were born into without choosing, you are acting as a patriarch would like you to act: man up, shut up.

this is also not true btw. everyone needs to get more kyriarchy in their feminist analysis.

there is no "ongoing collective permission of men," because patriarchy is not a fucking democracy. it is one element of an entire matrix of domination (to use Patricia Collins' term from Black Feminist Thought) and the majority of man are, at best, foot soldiers and cannon fodder for the (white supremacist imperialist eugenicist cisheteroperisex-)patriarchy.

patriarchy, as all systems of oppression do, creates an illusion that the majority of people have some inherent connection with those in power, in order to convince them to support the system and so that they do not recognize how the system truly works. when you say shit like this, you are buying into that patriarchal illusion.

and like, yes, if all men / the majority of men suddenly developed a feminist consciousness and became dedicated to anti-patriarchal action, obviously that would be a massive blow to patriarchy and kyriarchy as a whole. but realistically, that will never happen in a way perfectly removed from everyone else? there is no way the majority of men will become anti-patriarchal without it having anything to do with women. there will never be a world where men simply decide that patriarchy is bad and deconstruct it while all the ladies sit around a pool drinking cocktails.

the system of white supremacy, of imperialism, of ableism, etc. could not exist without the participation of white people, citizens of the imperial core, abled people, etc. which is why these systems do not ask permission from these groups, they construct institutions and social worldviews which manufacture these groups & their participation in the system. these institutions and worldviews are difficult to separate oneself from, hard to even fully understand in the first place. it will NEVER ever ever ever ever be as simple as "everyone who is classed as the dominant group one day simply decides to reject it and then the whole system crumbles and everyone celebrates." liberation will always require solidarity. which itself requires emotional intelligence, conflict resolution skills, and not waiting for the people one suffers alongside to be ideologically perfect/ly aligned with you before they "deserve" your solidarity.

2026 - 2025 - 2024 - 2023

in spite of it all, happy 2026 pride.

you can download current and past hi-res versions of these over at my ko-fi (ok to print for personal use): https://ko-fi.com/mxmorgan/shop/freedownloads

you can also snag shirts here which go to various orgs: https://mxmorgan.threadless.com/collections/pride

these get reposted a whole lot from here to reddit to twitter to tiktok and on and on, and i don't personally care whether or not i'm credited. i made these for everyone to use, enjoy, and find meaning in them. i appreciate folks who do credit me, but if able, please at least link to the threadless shop in the previous post - folks can get an official shirt where 90% of earnings go to trans led orgs focused on mental health (which is an important matter in general, but very personal to me) and not from a scam bot site selling AI-churned maga garbage where you probably won't get one anyway. i also suggest downloading the files from my ko-fi - they are free/PWYW and you can use them to make your own shirt, patch, embroidery project, whatever. tips are always nice, cuz i do like a pizza now and then, but never required for download.

Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead – a worthy woman... ...I would say "how lucky am I"

Father in heaven who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water... ...Who would then transform me from a man to woman? Were I only to have merited this being so graced by goodness...

What shall I say? why cry or be bitter? If my father in heaven has decreed upon me and has maimed me with an immutable deformity then I do not wish to remove it. the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure and for which no comfort can be found. So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground. Since I have learned from our tradition that we bless both, the good and the bitter I will bless in a voice hushed and weak: blessed are you [HaShem] who has not made me a woman.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.