edith bungy..

people in every queer and trans community i go to set an expectation: i should ofrever abandon my muslim past, i should explicitly stop associating yourself with it whatsoever, you either get to be queer or you either get to be raised-muslim.

in reality, there's no such expectation for christianity, and none of them are ready to dismantle their "inner christian" in their heads as much as they expect be to dismantle my "inner muslim"

none fo them get to admit how most first world countries are culturally christian, because christianity is "default" to them, as well as first world, as well as white.

me having a complicated relationship with islam doesn't mean i absolutely despise every piece of it. it means i distanced myself from ummah, but won't hear islamic criticism from non ex muslims at all, because you expect us to dismantle "our inner muslims" in ways you aren't ready to dismantle imperialism and racism in you.

your expectation is us "acting white", you don't want us unless we're that, which means you don't want us at all.

a lot of people claiming to want to uplift brown queer voices and such don't procced to do anything meaningful for them, or for brown people at all. it's just virtue signaling, homonationalism. you'd only care of brown people being queer, and you want the "brown" part of it gone as much as possible.

a lot of people say they want the leftist agenda to stop being us centric and imperialist, but then it's just pretending to care about it. you already made is so little and unhearable you'd have to get out of your way to seek for us speaking. then you'd not seek or if you find us, you will just pass by. hoping someone else would amplify the voice you took from us? and that someone else would hope for that too, so what?

you want us only when we agree with everything usa says about us, you want us until our lives don't put you into too much discomfort. when they put you into too much discomfort, you don't ask why, you'll restore the comfort by banishing us again. your tolerability of us is so intricately conditional, to meet those a third worlder has to build themselves into a first worlder mindset. this is your (inter)nationalism hey.

Like ok, you’re transfemme. You have hella bad experiences with non-transfemmes doing transmisogyny to you so you end up interacting almost exclusively with other transfemmes.

But you’re also Black, and you hope that also being marginalized will help cut out the antiblackness and transmisogynoir from non-Black transfemmes, but it turns out they still gonna do that shit to you, so you retreat to just other Black transfemmes.

And then you get hit with long covid or literally any other disability, can’t work anymore because of it and become reliant on mutual aid to survive. Surely, you think, the double whammy of being Black and transfemme means they’ll understand ableism too. Maybe mask so you can be with them safely without getting even more disabled.

And then they don’t, so you try to find other disabled Black transfemmes, a sliver of a sliver of a sliver, but they’re all ALSO broke and isolated and surviving on mutual aid and luck and they tell you your options are to accept everything being done to you so that you have a chance of surviving via mutual aid and community resources, or simply give up.

So you go back to the larger community to have a chance of surviving, because the average lifespan for Black transfemmes is mid-30s and you’d like to beat the average at least, and you prepare to suffer again, to survive.

Last year, two of the best known/loved cis Black women who were disability advocates on Twitter died due to lack of mutual aid. One couldn’t raise funds for her chemo, the other couldn’t raise funds for a rideshare to the hospital the day she died and knew that an ambulance would ruin her financially.

I look at them, two well known and loved disabled Black women who put so much effort into helping their community only to die due to lack of help, and then I look at the other disabled Black trans folks I know surviving off of mutual aid and I wonder how much longer it’ll be until it’s them, because they damn sure don’t got the same amount of people that even know who they are.

2 sec was enough

i'll keep it a buck twenty with you. a way i learned how to stylize animal faces was tracing. i just traced that shit.

it's a massively helpful tool to draw over references as a way to study. obviously, don't trace it, post it, and claim you drew it. but for studies that are purely personal, studies that will never really see the light of day, just trace.

don't force yourself to rely purely on your imagined idea of what these animals look like. find REAL references, and study various angles, expressions, etc. figure out how these animals are constructed! the animal kingdom has such a vast world of colors and shapes, just dive right in!

and especially for the purpose of drawing furries, you can ignore so much of a photo reference. don't worry about realistic fur textures, extraneous details, scientifically accurate depictions. draw from a wide array of interpretations.

you'll find many of your favorite interpretations still have solid foundation in the real animal! and once you figure out the rules, you can bend and break the rules! you'll learn how to capture the essence of that animal, and make a style that is truly your own.

find reference. study reference. figure out animal. draw animal in your own style. badabing, badaboom!!!

also i'll just put this here. it's great. i stare at it a lot.

As a white person raised in a white supremacist society, you’re gonna fuck up sometimes. That’s just a fact. But racialized people often aren’t able/comfortable speaking up when y’all do some shit because of the power imbalance/not feeling up to educating when you may be resistant/don’t think the “fight” will be Worth It.

Show initiative without making it A Struggle or playing the white guilt card. Show you actually care about them, their struggles, and the way you interact with them BEFORE they have to have a bigger Conversation with you, beyond when they need to yell about someone else being racist.

Even close friends or partners are not necessarily safe. I have had partners dismiss accusations of racism just off hand, I have had partners treat me like a repository for knowledge on Muslim cultural practices despite the fact that *my family has been Christian since Jesus,* hell I have had a partner say I was overplaying my pain at the genocide to get sympathy.

IF YOU ARE WHITE YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE FIRST STEP OR YOU ARE JUST PUTTING MORE LABOR AND DANGER ON YOUR RACIALIZED FRIENDS FOR YOUR FUCKING COMFORT

Character commission for @fat2can on Bsky!

GAHAHHAHAA I made a comic!!! will I ever do it again? i don't know this killed me it took all night and all day 🚬👴🏻 I need to lie down.