zayza

bsky replies: its not uncommon for some tops to put condoms on the strap because its still possible to transmit std's. also it could just be a joke and shes just doing it cuz shes bisexual or something and has them lying around maybe and its funny cuz they dont need them?

Trans people are hungry and we’ve mostly been getting by on crumbs. I’m not saying that there are NO media with trans characters, but you have to admit that there are not a lot of really good things to read/watch/consume that have trans characters (and this is without getting into the question of whether or not those characters or the media they’re presented in cater to your particular tastes!)

^ This is usually the real problem. Certain genres and mediums have it worse, too! Think about how expensive it is to make movies or TV shows and how many people you have to get approval from and how many people need to be hired and paid to make one that makes it to cable, streaming services, or theaters, as an example.

Books and comics give us more to choose from in part because the barrier to pushing one out into the world is lower, though still not as much as I would like.

Personally, I want to make a TV show, but I can’t. So, I’m making the story into a comic that could maybe get adapted someday. This brings us close to my point:

Two of the protagonists (and many more of the side characters) in my current project are canonically trans. To some people, these two will be refreshing / the representation that they have been waiting to see for AGES. Those people will feel like they are being presented with a feast. To others, it will feel like being handed an empty plate and told to eat up. Those people are not wrong and I will not take it personally. The way that my writing makes them feel will be extremely real and undeniably valid.

What I want fellow writers to understand is that these feelings are not always going to be the fault of the individual author of the individual project that inspired these feelings (with the caveat that it does kind of suck when a new fictional trans person turns out to be exactly like all the other crumbs we’ve been forced to call a feast.) The people you make angry by breaking away from the norm could simply be mad because they’re used to feeling seen rather than because you've done something terrible.

People will be angry if a trans character is conventionally attractive or if they aren’t. They’ll be angry if you make the character pre-everything, non-op, HRT only, 10 years into a “do everything” transition, fat, thin, tall, short, etc. They’ll be angry if you make the character gay, straight, bi, pan, aro, ace -- I could keep going, but I won’t.

My point is that while you should definitely take the reasoning behind the anger your work may inspire into consideration and you should ABSOLUTELY remain critical of your own work if you want it to be the best it could possibly be...

You also have to be aware that you CANNOT please everyone, especially not with a single trans character in isolation, and you should not work yourself half to death trying to meet some imaginary guidelines of what “good” representation is, because it doesn’t exist.

"Good representation" means something different to everyone.

Also, someone already made basically what I was trying to express in this post but better and also in a single image:

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH EVERYBODY*

here's the lgbtq tag trending as it does regularly due to multiple porn bots catfishing using the same stolen pictures of the same trans woman on the same page

remember the year in review? this was one of the featured tags. note that despite neither the image nor video in the posts in this screenshot being marked as mature content, this screenshot of them is going to mark this post as mature content as soon as I post it

here's some of the lovely messages of positivity you can expect to get if you're a transfem on this platform! I cropped the real-life gore images out of the first one, the person in the second one has made multiple posts like this + pedojacketed me and still has that same account and does that same shit, and the the person in the third took weeks for tumblr to do anything about, because:

here's tumblr staff stating that making explicit death threats towards transfems is not a violation of the ToS or user guidelines!

and here they are stating it again! and while we're on the subject of who the user guidelines apply to:

here's SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY MY CONTENTLESS REBLOG of a year-old post with 15,000 notes being flagged as sexually explicit (over 100 times in case you thought it was maybe a fluke) despite the image in the post not actually showing anything, SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY MY CONTENTLESS REBLOG of a heated rivalry gifset showing two fully nude dudes fucking center frame getting flagged as sexually explicit, which it is according to tumblr's definition, but despite that it has tens of thousands of notes and in fact is so popular and shared that if you look over to the third image you can see that same gif as one of the trending tag thumbnails! and on that note:

here's an episode of an anime available on youtube with a TV-14 age rating that I posted a screenshot of that got flagged as sexually explicit, had the appeal denied twice, got fully nuked off the site, and then got my entire blog marked as mature for posting!

and here's that same already-marked-as-mature blog curiously being marked as mature a second time out of the blue 15 minutes before they dropped the age verification update that would hide mature content!

and here's my first blog of 13 years getting a SPECIAL type of mature flag that marks all of my posts as mature content individually and separately from the actual mature content label!

you don't get to appeal these terminations btw! they automatically and instantly deny your appeal and send you the rejection before you even get the email telling you they got the appeal and will carefully review it

not that appealing will do anything anyways! here's tumblr staff terminating me for explicit content when I appealed the explicit flag on a post that they accepted the appeal on after terminating me for it,

and here's tumblr staff denying my appeal on that termination, lying about why i was terminated, terminating my already-and-still-terminated blog a second time to change the termination reason to one i can't appeal, which they then upgraded from an account deactivation into a postmortem full account nuke! isn't that wild?

here's them doing it to me a second time

and here's tumblr staff terminating me FIVE TIMES in multiple weeks it took them to do anything about a burner blog and a post pedojacketing me and encouraging people to harass me forever over completely fabricated claims that everyone spreading it around admitted were false on the post itself by the way! note also how only the burner blog got deleted - but the main account? just a post removal. after weeks of it being reported and spread around. the fastest of my terminations during this period was three hours after making the account by the way!

which isn't an isolated occurrence, either! they'll pass over multiple open, avowed nazis posting swastikas and slur-filled nazi race science shit about how they think black people are biologically inferior subhumans for months on end to nuke some random transfem off the site in as little as 10 minutes after account creation, then take MULTIPLE MONTHS to respond to your report of someone sending you harassment messages to tell you that the content you reported has already been removed (because it's an ask in the inbox of an account they already terminated along with four others in the time it took them to respond)!

And to really send a clear message about where they stand, they've REALLY ramped up the termination of transfems since the start of pride! And everybody will act like you deserve it and are a subhuman unworthy of life if you don't openly support the multiple ongoing harassment campaigns against transfems, all enabled and quietly endorsed by tumblr staff and moderation!

Yup! It’s an old one of mine. It’s a shitty collapsible cane that is curved now because it wasn’t strong enough to bear my full weight over years without bending. It has two more stickers that read “questions $5” and “disability doesn’t discriminate”

I started using a cane in 2019, despite a lot of internalized ableism on my part, because I started dating someone else disabled and they told me they thought a cane might help me. It has, so so fucking much. I’ve used a cane, walker, and wheelchair, but I mainly use canes.

If a mobility aid would help you, you can use it. People will be weird because the average person is ableist but you shouldn’t let that keep you from using something that would help you no matter what age you are. The fact that I’m younger and attractive but use a cane has constantly gotten me the exact phrase “oh is your cane a statement piece?” Literally dozens of times. I don’t know where they all get that exact wording.

If you think a mobility aid would help you, whether a cane, walker, rollator, crutches, forearm crutches, or a manual or electric wheelchair, please use it no matter what age you are or what you think people might say.

Not sponsored, but I get most of mine from canesgalore.com because they cut to size, have tall/hefty canes (up to 550lbs tolerance for my main black cane iirc), and have decent priced good ones not just fancy and expensive or shitty and cheap.

To accurately size your canes, use this: