My Reblogs Ig

Back when I was studying interior glass design (like how you make those church windows and stuff), most of my schoolmates were a collection of the gayest looking alt girls considerably possible. Like my class year was about 8-12 people (depending on how you count) and in that section there were two that had a mohawk, two that had dreadlocks, and two that had blue hair. Notable mention to the one who was standing firmly in all three categories, having a blue dreadlock mohawk. But anyway I digress.

On my third year there, the new class of students had a girl who looked so wildly out of place there. Dressed all in soft vintage-y pastels with never-been-dyed sandy blonde hair, no piercings save for pearl earrings, no tattoos. Sweet, quiet, so soft-spoken that she was almost inaudible - to the point that we made jokes that we all have to learn sign language because it's the only way she could make herself heard in a rowdy art school classroom. If you've ever been in a zoo that had one of those tropical enclosures with parrots and monkeys all screaming at ear-shattering volumes and tackling each other for shits and giggles, imagine one of those rooms but there's a tiny little big-eyed white-dotted baby fawn sitting shyly in one corner.

Anyway this one time I was out with schoolmates, and she had come along. Having been at the bar for a few drinks, we retired to another classmate's place - she didn't live in the same student housing as I and most of the rest, she had her own apartment and an adorable pink hairless cat who was oddly extroverted and wanted to personally greet and inspect all guests. Didn't like me very much, on account of my hands being cold.

Anyway we sat in the living room - some on the sofa, some on the floor, drinking beers and other such beverages, talking random shit - when I noticed that Little Fawn Girl wasn't there. I knew she didn't smoke so she had definitely not snuck out for a quick one, so I had to go find her. That didn't take long, she was sitting at the hallway by the door, in the dark, with her shoulders hunched up and the hairless cat loudly purring on her lap. She was softly, very softly, petting the cat's smooth leathery skin.

Figuring she wouldn't be here if she'd want to make a scene of all this, I quietly got to her and asked if she's okay. She had tears running down her face and she was shaking, trying to draw a shivery breath to talk, clearly having difficulties to just form a sentence, not to mention also being audible over the loud rumbling engine of Pink Leather Therapy Goblin 3000 on her lap. Eventually, not being able to speak up any better, she leaned in to whisper into my ear.

(id in alt text)

new monthly post: my wife and i are disabled Black trans folks living in TX, both currently unemployed despite our best efforts, and we are at risk of being evicted and losing our home every month on top of not being able to afford any of our living expenses (like our utilities or the costs of managing our disabilities). as a result, we are reliant on mutual aid to stay afloat. reblogging this post (WITH NO TAGS UNLESS TO GIVE ACCESSIBILITY INFO) and donating helps the most. please, PLEASE help us not be on the streets and lose everything again.

$347.93/$1262.24 (12 days past due, $914.31 needed by 8/21 to avoid eviction)

$10/$277 for power bill (8 days past due, must be paid in full by 8/25 to avoid shutoff)

$0/$90 for groceries

made some progress, but we need people to CONTINUE TO DONATE CONSISTENTLY if i have any hope of keeping us housed. our power bill goal really hasnt moved, and i also need $90 to pick up a few things we need in the house. until my wife and i are able to get jobs, we have no other way of being able to survive without help. please consider chipping in.

however! it does seem to be ripping off this actual chair by an actual furniture company:

He was chatting with me as he pulled out cash to pay, “You know, I always thought it would be so much easier to meet ladies. But then you meet a girl and you start chatting and they’re never as impressed that I know Captain Kirk’s middle name as I expected them to be.”

I took his payment with a grin and said, “I dunno, Tiberius is an amazing middle name, it was their loss.”

He looked at me with utter awe, radiating a disbelieving joy that I’d parried his quip so effortlessly with Trekkie lore. “If I were thirty years younger…” he’d said, absolutely delighted.

but i have never in my life seen a post saying to support masculine trans girls and trans women or trans girls and trans women who like traditionally masculine things and its really important to understand that showing support for trans women in any form is just as important as showing support for trans men so please, please reblog this.

I’m a disability activist and it’s part of my day job, too so I actually have a fair bit, I think.

Here’s a link to a post i made on this a while back, including this book:

For some pretty interesting but mostly text-based scholarship on disabled people in history, Disability Studies Quarterly offers full text online (EE!), and I *think* they have PDFs that include images and/or artworks.

This issue in particular has some great articles on Disabled Shakespearean characters and themes.

Here is a post about a deaf man who greatly confused some Americans in the late 1800s. Here is a painting of the Virgin and Child appearing to a “lame” noblewoman from the 1750s. I have some paintings of Billy Waters and some disabled Black sailors in the British Navy from the 1800s here:

Here is a PDF excerpt from Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of Disability that includes at least one image from an illuminated manuscript.

Greg Carrier, a graduate student in Medieval Studies at the intersection of disability wrote a series of guest posts for the Medieval Middle, has a blog here that you can look through to find images and writing about the depiction of disabled people in Medieval Art as well as evidence from writing and I *think* surviving objects as well. For example:

Here’s a pretty cool resource on a disability/representation exhibit that has a lot of images, including The Beggars by Pieter Brueghel:

More on that work here.

honestly Portrait of a Lady on Fire was the beginning of my annoyance with this (we do it to ourselves, too! why are we so afraid of giving ourselves happy endings as sapphic creators?!)

there was no reason it HAD to end sadly. everyone says "oh it's the 18th century!!!!" but they could have stayed in touch. or the artist one could have been hired as the rich one's lady's maid, or something! sure, that's the story the writer and director wanted to tell, but in interviews they act like it had to be that way because of the period. which is absurd considering how many records we have of sapphic relationships surviving marriages of convenience back then (Isabella of Parma and Maria Christina of teschen come to mind- both married, and it only ended when one of them died)

after that it felt like I couldn't stop seeing it. in genre books and movies that are praised for their depth and themes and ambiguous or unhappy or tragic endings, even ones we write ourselves. and I can enjoy that sometimes! Carmilla is my favorite book and I love the Haunting of Hill House, which isn't even explicitly sapphic!

but. I don't know. I read ACOtAR and its dramatic fated death-defying romance that gets milestone after milestone and happiness after happiness and

well. it's Silly. it's Romantasy. it's Wish Fulfillment for the Straights and we're Above that. duh!

The thing about misgendering is that it's not people being wrong or doing an oopsie like i have G cups.

If you refer yourself to my tits it's pretty easy to figure out that i'm not a guy, and that's the thing like people call me sir they aren't being like. Ah Yes of course a Man (on account of the G cup tits. they're hard to miss)

Like when they see me they see a tranny, and their brain rings the Tranny alarm, and that's why they call me a man. because they know i'm not one and that upsets them because they think i'm supposed to be one.

Anyway yeah, i think thats the thing to remember about getting misgendered, like, a lot of the time, people know. People know, and they're doing it Because they know, because when they see a beautiful girl that's a little clockable, they can only see someone trying to Trick them into seeing a woman when it's actually a man (perhaps even one could say a trap).

I think it's important to remember that it's a purposeful act, both politically and personally, I think it helps to remember that they don't see a guy when they look at you. They see the tgirl that you are and that's what makes them upset.