Brain out of motion

90yo woman, at least 20 years unmoored in time, with a reputation for grumpiness: You're a man?!

Me, 28yo trans man with a very small beard, rare male nursing/healthcare staff member for this area: Yes.

90yo: Are you sure?

Me: Yes.

90yo: Are you looking to be a boy or a man or a woman?

Me: I'm a man.

90yo: You'd be very pretty as a girl.

Me: Thank you.

90yo: You're a girl with a beard?

Me: It's just my face.

90yo: You should shave it so people will see you're a girl.

Me: That's why I grow it.

90yo: You should grow it so people will see you're a man.

Me: This is as long as it gets right now.

90yo: Is it your hormones?

Me: Yes, they were a bit low.

90yo: Are you a girl growing into a man?

Me: Yes, I'm a man.

80yo woman, friendly and polite, sitting next to an empty bed (neatly made): I'll just get him up for you. Alan, wake up, the nurse is here!

Me: No need, I'm just here for you today. He can rest.

80yo: All right, Alan is just snoozing.

Me: How long have you been married?

80yo: We're not married.

Me: Oh, who is Alan to you?

80yo: He's my husband, we've been married over 60 years.

Me: Does he snore?

[rain bucketing down outside]

Me: How are you, this fine day?

70yo: It's fucking horrible!

She said, "Really? I'm not married?"

"No, you haven't been married to him for thirty years."

I was often mistaken by these folks by other people in their life by name and timeline. I didn’t really mind this. They knew I was someone they felt safe around and they were always happy to see me as a child was rare to come by.

My grandma was never a big talker in her twilight days but I loved to tell her everything and anything. She never really got anyone else’s name right as far as her family but she always knew mine and would use memory care phone to call her adult children at random hours of the day and night to tell them about me by name in accurate detail.

Every so often she would grab my hand when she wanted to tell me important life advice. It would include anything from how to hide money from my husband in budgeting to how to best ditch my high school classes to get the roller rink without being caught.

One time while playing dominos with just us, she reached over and told me, “It’ll get hard. The days will get terribly long and the months will feel so short but there’s so much in those moments between and that love will carry.”

I wanna tell you all about my mom. I know this is a sentence used against transmascs, and im a trans man, so I wanna use my voice to tell you about my mom.

My mom is a cis woman, a gender nonconforming woman. (I had to teach her gnc recently actually, because she couldn’t find a term that she felt accurate.)

My mom has always hung out with mostly guys, she can fix cars, we half-joke (because its true) that every time she breaks up with a man they steal her toolbox (they do). We’re going to negate her current relationship because my stepdad is a feminist who adores her, but not all of her exes where like that.

My mom has faced SO MUCH misogyny over her clothing, her makeup, her hobbies. When she was building her tiny model car, her ex would drunkly rant how thats a “boys hobby” and “she shouldn’t be doing that”. Her and my dad used to renovate houses when they were married, Dad would plaster, and mom would plaster alongside him. While also fixing doors and windows, and floors, and ceilings, and painting the damn thing. When she goes to autoparts stores, or car lots, they always talk to her like shes stupid. Recently shes been bringing her husband, so the associate will ramble his ear off, and when theyre finally done, her husband turns to her and goes “babe I don’t know a thing hes talking about, what do you suggest?” because theyre both just so pissed off about it.

Don’t get me wrong, my moms for the girls too! She’ll give her enemy a tampon type of person. But the girls turn their backs on her, quite frequently. Mom used to have a friend, a male friend, who would go to the bar with her. I knew him well. They’re not friends anymore because he used her hobbies and interests to try to sleep with her. He would always try to change her too. Mom likes cooking, so he would try to push her away from things like watching fantasy TV (he thought that was a more ‘male’ genre) or fixing up the house for things like cooking and cleaning.

And so when I came out as trans, it was a really hard time for my mom. She understands now, and shes a HUGE HUGE ally and advocate for me, and I couldn’t fathom having a more supportive mother, but she was really confused. Mom was worried I wanted to transition because the misogyny gnc/masculine women face. I didn’t shave, I liked playing with knives and multitools, when I did makeup it was always more Kiss/Marilyn Manson style, when my sisters did a Marilyn Monroe.

I remember her driving us home from the clothing shop I came out to her in, and the talk we had. She asked me if I was confused, and I said I was sure. She said that I could just be a tomboy, like her. That it didn’t matter what everyone else said about being a masculine woman. Having talked later as adults, she thought I thought the only option for the type of masculinity I have was to be a man. She was so scared for me and my safety because of how punished masculinity is in women.

So now, as I’m 23, and its 2025, Mom is still the gender nonconforming woman she always has been. Mom taught me how to fish, how to use a hatchet, knife safety, and how to cook and sew. I’m a man who picks up heavy things for her now that shes too disabled too, who wears makeup and nail polish with my denim cutoffs and binder, who still has to call my mommy when I can’t get this screw to screw in right mom, I dont know your tips and tricks.

And masculine women can exist alongside trans men. My mom goes to my hormone appointments with me to make sure these doctors are listening to me, she yells at me when I take my shots late, she picks up my hormones if I’m at work. Mom takes me to Pride every year, and god rest the soul of any transphobes that cross my mothers path. My moms for the girls and the gays, the he’s and the they’s, the its and the lesbians and everyone between. Mom will fix you dinner and your car, and we give her gifts on fathers day too because she was Mom and Dad growing up.

(and also the fact that leaving things such as food production in the hands of billionaires is the worst idea you can have)

The only thing that is real are the means of production and the workers who actually create everything we use to live.

(A bigger-fool commodity is one that has no inherent worth, so you'd have to be a fool to pay money for it. If you have paid money for it, the only thing you can do is try to find a bigger fool to buy it from you at a higher price.)

Let's consider Apple just as an example. At the time I'm writing this, there are about 14.84 billion shares of Apple outstanding, each share is trading at about $238.15, for a total market capitalization (a.k.a. market cap, the total value of all outstanding shares) of approximately $3.53 trillion dollars.

So what does a share of Apple actually get you?

Stocks have value in three ways:

They (may) pay dividends. Periodically a company may decide to pay out a certain amount of money to each share of stock. In the case of Apple, that amount is currently around 25 cents, and they have been doing it three to four times a year. So your share of Apple will gain you about one dollar a year of passive income. If you bought a share today, you'd have to keep it for over two hundred years (assuming Apple continues to exist and pay dividends at the current rate) to make back your purchase price.

You can vote at shareholder meetings. This is worthless unless you hold a significant percentage of the total shares, such that your vote actually means something. In the case of Apple, you'd have to own literally millions of shares to even be noticed.

You can sell it to a bigger fool.

For the average small investor (i.e., basically everyone who isn't a billionaire or a major investment fund) the first two points are worthless, at least compared to the stock price. The only useful thing you can do with a share of stock is sell it to someone else, hopefully for more than you paid for it.

(Well, there are maneuvers like shorting, where you make a bet that the stock price will fall; but those are mostly the domain of those billionaires and major investment funds.)

The price of a stock is based entirely on what you think someone else will pay for it in the future, and what that hypothetical person will pay is based on what they think someone else will pay for it, which in turn etc. etc. it's all circular.

"But you own part of the company!" people always say to me. "That's where the value comes from." OK, fine. One share of Apple means I own one fifteen-billionth of the company. What, concretely, does that actually mean? Can I walk into an Apple building and just scoop up some coffee creamers and walk out, because I "own" them? No, I'll be tackled by security and thrown out. All that share means is that I own a notional object that has no intrinsic value.

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening