✧varian✧

I can’t draw but I wanted to make a comic using vampires as a sort of metaphor for disorders induced by trauma so I made one!

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

My lists:

Verified GFM List #1

Verified GFM List #2

Verified GFM List #3

Verified GFM List #4

Verified GFM List #5

Verified GFM List #6

Verified GFM List #7

Verified GFM List #8

Verified GFM List #9

Verified GFM List #10

Verified GFM List #11

Verified GFM List #12

Verified GFM List #13

Verified GFM List #14

Additional resources:

Hussein/Nairuz’s verified gofundme spreadsheet

@gaza-evacuation-funds

the problem with terfs is not just transphobia, it never was, the radical feminism is also so unbelievably harmful. you cannot save it and it will not save you, stop drawing lines between queer people and join hands with them instead. remove people who are actually harmful, not innocent people who happen to have the wrong sexuality or gender or job. we get there together or we don't get there at all. we need each other now more than ever. do not listen to those who seek to divide us even if they are queer. we all deserve so much better than the hell radical feminism pretends is a liberated future.

I am so very very tired of being told to protect cis women. Don't make them uncomfortable in the bathroom or the locker room thats a "safe space," don't talk about how reproductive rights being stripped affects us too because "its a women's movement, don't derail," don't talk about how we are also victims of violence from cis men because "You're men, that doesn't happen to you, don't forget your privilege."

I'm so tired of it. Because you know what, I have been protecting cis women my entire life. I was that friend! I was the friend who stood up to cis men that made them uncomfortable, I'm the one they went to when they didn't feel safe, I was the one who slapped and punched and screamed at and reported every single fucking creep that made cis women uncomfortable and afraid. I was that person. And whether it was my masculine energy and look, or the fact that I'm ugly or the fact that I'm on the heavier side, you can blame it on whatever you want, but I was the person that cis women friends, classmates, and coworkers came to when they were uncomfortable. I was the person protecting them! Me!

But now that I'm a man? Now that I'm no longer a masculine women? Now that I've stepped over the smallest fucking line by daring to call myself a different word (I don't pass, before you get your panties in a bunch. Not you op, people in general) now suddenly I'm so scary?

When is it my fucking turn to be protected? Okay? When is it my turn? Because this has bothered me since I was a girl! Since I was that butch that everyone flocked to to stand up to cis men. When do I get to be protected? Because it is fucking radio silence from cis women. Now that I'm not a girl, what I don't matter anymore? Now that I'm the one who needs protecting LIKE IVE ALWAYS NEEDED no one is going to stand up for me? None of them.

When is it my turn to be afraid? When is it my turn to be comforted? When is it my turn to be protected? Why do they never, ever care?

I love my queer siblings, my trans siblings, and they've been nothing but wonderful, but it is still something I see even within the queer community, people that have done no or minimal work deconstructing gender, they are so quick to turn coat on trans men for the crime of being men. I'm so tired of being a man only when I've done something wrong, to have them call me a man as an insult. To project all their anger at cis men at me, who, surprise surprise is also treated like shit by cis het men. I'm a gay trans man. My passing goal is to be called a faggot instead of a tranny, so fuck, even passing isn't going to get me into their good graces.

Im just so tired. Cis women. Cis HET women especially, God, fucking do better.

(And yes I'm making generalizations based on my own experience, fucking sue me, I'm upset)