stuffed creature

⭐️ VHSdogs july mail club !! ⭐️

this month’s bundle is anti a//i themed and you get three things!

a screenprint patch, sticker and print !

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

people are perverted as hell about muscular and skinny bodies in public and it's barely considered taboo. straight-sized people pursue their body type explicitly to be seen as sexy, get laid, to feel good in their skin. even by means that are considered risky to your health -- weight loss meds like oz*mpic, diets and fasting, steroids, to name just a few -- if it's in the pursuit of normalized "skinniness" it's within bounds regardless of stated intent. all these methods and reasons are casually accepted without question in our society because they fall into a certain mold.

but as soon as you decide for yourself what's sexy and it falls outside a norm, as soon as you choose to proudly gain weight because you enjoy it, the double standard becomes apparent. suddenly, it's taboo.

reactionaries will justify their disgust reaction by any means, pretending to care about your health all of the sudden as if you don't have the agency to make calculated risks like every other person on this planet. it's dehumanizing and polices the bodies of others.

the decision to include feedism within the definition of "disordered eating" is not only ignorant, it's spineless, hypocritical, unfair, and it's rooted in vile prejudices that don't align with the projected message of this site. if staff have any integrity they'll change it back, though I don't believe they will.

forgive me if this is a bit meandering and i've reblogged quite a few posts about this already, but i had to put in my thoughts. gaining and feedism will never be contained by one website or space. as someone who grew up in neglect and isolation being queer in a right-wing household, it may have saved my life to know there were others out there like me and many at that.