I am alive, I am alive

I felt an overwhelming sense of loss today because I discovered something new that I was afraid I'd never be able to find. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I'm out of energy to go more down this rabbit hole, so I'm sharing in case I can come back to it in the future and put in the time to try to dig it up...

I've been entranced with Leslie Feinberg's work the last few months. I have friends (and my own) struggling with gender and sexuality and identity and Stone Butch Blues gave me a lot of vocabulary and insight about it. I discovered Leslie and SBB in 2025. Zie has never been a part of my life while zie was alive, but I know now that Leslie affected my life before I ever heard of hir, and I want hir legacy to continue on. Enough that I'm working on my typeset of it from hir free-to-all pdf to distribute freely to others to help it continue to exist, as zie took "Stone Butch Blues off the capitalist market. "

How could you not fall a little in love with that? I sure did. I read through Minnie Bruce's site a bit (hir partner from the 90s to death in 2014, and Minnie died in 2023), and I can see I'm going to be falling down that rabbit hole as well, but I'm still focused on Leslie presently.

Right now, I know Leslie and Minnie Bruce only through their websites, and there's something so timeless and temporary about that for me... the timeless in the, "I can continue to keep hir words alive" by working on my typeset and creating of more copies of SBB, but then I just a hit a wall and with Leslie dead and Minnie Bruce dead, does it even exist anymore? How fleeting hir work can be if it is no longer commodified and diseminated within our broken exploitative capitalist system...

Back to my issue... above is a snip from this site: https://transgenderwarrior.org/casualty/ which is about Leslie's fighting with Lyme disease but even more, Leslie's fighting with our broken health care system. I've had several friends going through similar struggles in the last few years, and the frustration of watching people I love losing energy to keep fighting their own physical struggles while having to fight with their insurance providers and health care providers to have their concerns taken seriously is INFURIATING.

So I found that site, Casualty of an Undeclared War, and I started downloading the chapters for reading and (possible) binding since I can't find it compiled and for sale.

So the first page is that snip above, giving the intro to the series.

Then there's the table of contents to click on. See how the intro above ends with "Next: Casualty of an undeclared war"? Meaning, I would think, that Part 1 is the next chapter with that title... then Part 2 with Medical combatants, right? But when I click on Part 1, I get the intro again.

This is the bottom of it, saying "Next: Casualty of an undeclared war" again.

And when you click Part 2, it's indeed, Part 2, alluding to there being a Part 1 which does not exist. I started looking for "contact me" but of course, both of the writers/creators have died, and while I'm sure there are trustees, I wasn't find anything simply and was hitting a wall of exhaustion/no energy to keep digging right now, and it was just so sad to think these words might be forever lost... until, while writing this out of frustration, I realized I could back into the Part 1 if Leslie/Minnie Bruce/whoever helped them with their sites was consistent in the page labelling and voila! It popped up when I manually changed the address (which I can't find any link to on the site currently.)

https://transgenderwarrior.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/lyme1.pdf took me to the Part 1 I was afraid was gone forever! It's such a little thing, but the happiness I felt to discover it was still available to me took my breath away for a minute.

It's astonishing to me the people (creators, usually) who have left me with more sense of self and more vocabulary to define my feelings than those who raised me have been able to do so from beyond the grave. My parents are still around, and independently we try to love each other as best we can within our limited ability, but Leslie Feinberg and Andrea Gibson have rocked my world to its foundations in the last year, even though I never even heard of either of them until after their passing.

I'm choosing to take this as a tangible sign of hope right now. Even though those in absolute power right now are trying to destroy us all, the power we have been given from those fighting these same (never ending) fights before us are eternal, and through random discoveries and passion to share the knowledge with others, we can help them outlast the fascists.

Here is a very small and incomplete list of the people I have discovered so far that I have made/will make zines and books about who had a hidden impact on my life before I ever heard of them, even if it's just as an example of bravery and passion for truth and doing what's right that I want to live by. Sharing in case other random folks might stumble on this rambling and trip into an adjacent rabbit hole of their own:

Abel Meeropol

Andrea Gibson

Anne and Carl Braden

Leslie Feinberg

Minnie Bruce Pratt

My bff painted the cloth I used for the cover.

Family you choose is what matters at the end of the day. And when they can be both friend and family, like my brother, that's great, and I feel very blessed to have a great chosen family.

They are my chosen family because they make me work to be a better person and become someone I'm proud to be.

So if I'm with people (even family) who turn me into someone I don't like, that's a good reminder to be around the people you choose to be with, and not those you feel bound to out of duty.

It's hard to not feel bitter about how the values I was raised with, that I still value, even if I'm not in the faith I was raised with, seem to not be as important to my parents as they acted like when they were raising me. My parents made me a fighter. Stubborn as hell, and yeah, an annoying idealist. My dad raised me on the bible and star trek: the next generation. And he taught me that I was smart and to question things, but then got upset when I did. He gave me so many opportunities and he worked so hard for his family, but he's also an incredibly controlling jerk. And yeah, that last word was changed a few times.

But I do love him. I love them, both my parents, even though I could cite a million ways that they hurt me or come across like total jerks to people besides me, especially those on the internet who might stumble upon a stranger's public words thrown up on a random virtual wall. But... they raised me in a way that I just keep putting myself in their shoes. And I think they are broken people who did their best to raise me better than they had growing up.

And I like the person I became. I like me. I am proud of my values. And I want to give people a chance, especially when they act sincere or are vulnerable.

And it makes me give them a chance to hurt me, again and again.

And they always do. Every single time.

I'm glad my dad is okay. I hate that I feel manipulated and hurt and petty and childish after being around him. I wish I could keep my calm, but he hurts me just like breathing. And he doesn't even get it.

And so I'll keep working on myself, because I am the only person I can control. And he won't even think about it, except to tell himself his own narrative. Absolute narcissist.

So I can't even be mad at him because what's the point? I should set boundaries, I should learn, I should stop letting myself be hurt.

But I still love him. It fucking sucks.

I'm a loner, Dottie, a rebel, and that means that I communicate with other city dwellers in the silent language of our peoples through sticky vinyl on telephone poles and the backs of stop signs.

I kind of love the temporariness of it all. I'll come in someday and on my walk into work furtively peek over where I know I left a sticker a few days ago. And lo, it's gone. Covered with a coat of silver paint.

But I put up another (free Palestine!) sticker over the newly blank space, and when I walk past it towards my bus home at the end of the day, I see others pass it and keep glancing long enough to read it. I get a stealthy thumbs up from a cool old punk guy at a red light after I smooth out a (pro choice) sticker on the pole as we wait for the walk sign.

It's quieter than the bots and podcasts but there has to be some voices out there adding to the noise. I just don't have it in me to do the warfare online, so this is what I do in my city. Every time I talk to people in real life, I find connection.

I went to a retreat centering around a particular niche passion. And the people were all so great. Amazing demographic, people from all over the world (usa mainly) and wishing I could be friends with them in real life. And for four nights, I made the drinks. I got a whole bunch of folks liking creme de violette, go me (water lily ftw 🍸) and the last night, I hauled out my collection.

Stacks of pretty lady stickers (Jiji Knight) and cat art stickers (Stasia Burrington) and a bunch of local stickers from monstermonster (which is for sale, which is so sad...) and so many queer stickers and feminist stickers and assorted fun things. And people ask if they're free and I say yes! (Enjoy! Use! Share!)

And then I stack a big group of stickers that are antifascist and fuck ice and who the fuck elected elon musk (not as relevant now, turns out. Jfc what a loser. And this is coming from a huge nerd he would dismiss entirely of having any value at all) and no fascist usa and proceed to direct every single person who comes to partake of my stash to bring back to their towns. (Enjoy! Use! Share!)

And many did, and that makes me really happy. Tiny voices, but at least they're out there.

And I'm glad. I'm glad I can have tiny community impacts because I just feel so nationally helpless.

But community is where I can have impact. Maybe it's not much, but it's something.

I saw this yesterday on my walk into work. I don't agree with the latter sentiment, but I'm definitely supporting the former for the next four years.

And I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been

But I know where I want to go

And so I thought I'd let you know

Yeah, these things take forever, I especially am slow

But I realized that I need you

And I wondered if I could come home

Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and because you are continually committing nuisances but more especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it’s there and sitting down

on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity

i hate you