Just Here

You DO deserve a community that uplifts you. You DO deserve to experience trans joy. You DO deserve to have your voices heard and your struggles recognized. Wanting the bare minimum of solidarity is NOT "making everything about trans men".

The writer of two of the most well known stories worldwide, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo was a black man. 

chose to take on his slave grandmother’s last name, Dumas, like his father did before him.

grew up too poor for formal education, so was largely self-taught, including becoming a prolific reader, multilingual, well-travelled, and a foodie, resulting in his writing both a combination encyclopedia/cookbook (which just— is fucking outrageous to me) AND the adaptation of The Nutcracker on which Tchaikovsky based his ballet

he also wrote a LOOOOT of nonfiction and fiction about history, politics, and revolution, bc he was pro-monarchy, but a radical cuss, and that got him in a lot of hot water at home and abroad.

even beyond that, he generally put up with a lot of racist bullshit in France, so he went and wrote a novel about colonialism and a BLATANTLY self-insert anti-slavery vigilante hero (which he then cribbed from to write the Count of Monte Cristo, the main character of which, Edmond Dantés, Dumas also based on himself).

(…a novel which also features a LOAD of PoC beyond the Count, and at LEAST one queer character, btw, bc EVERY MOVIE ADAPTATION OF ANYTHING BY DUMAS IS A LIE; seriously, at LEAST one of the four Musketeers is Black, y'all.)

famously, when some fuckshit or other wanted to come at Dumas with some anti-Black foolishness, Dumas replied, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

for the bicentennial of his birthday, Pres. Jacques Cirac was like, “…sorry about the hella racism,” and had Dumas’s ashes reinterred at the Panthéon of Paris, bc if you’re gonna keep the corpses of the cream of the crop all together, Dumas’s more widely read and translated than literally everybody else.

and they are still finding stuff old dude wrote, seriously; like discovering “lost” works as recently as 2002, publishing stuff for the first time as recently as 2005.

ALSO IMPORTANT:

daddy general dumas was an immense fierce french warrior who was a 6 foot plus, stunningly gorgeous and charismatic Black gentleman 

he invaded egypt

the native egyptians said “is this napoleon? this must be napoleon. we for one welcome our majestic new overlord”

then napoleon showed up

napoleon has all the presence of yesterday’s plain Tesco hummus

the native egyptians were like “… no… no, we’ve thought very hard and we’ll have General Dumas actually”

this did not make napoleon happy

in fact it made him jealous

…and like this…

…while “Napoleon has all the presence of yesterday’s plain Tesco hummus“…

:-D

I suspect Alexandre Dumas would have laughed at that, because besides looking like someone who laughed a lot…

dom:

This is not including all the children who are lifeless underneath the rubble and not including the ones that were obliterated to the point where they cannot be identified. Free Palestine

Video: X: FisunGuner

5 simple exercises to awaken dormant muscles

I no longer have any hope of survival like I had at the beginning of this genocide, and I am certain that I will die in the next few weeks or maybe days. I have been sick with severe viral infection for days and cannot move from the mattress!

I suffer from nightmares that are so closely resemble reality that I no longer differentiate between reality and dream.

I live in a world other than the one I claimed to be building! I am a community activist who lived on the fantasy that the world was free and just, and I sought to bring rights not only to my people, but to many men and women in third world countries!

I was shocked that I was not from the third world! Indeed, we are the most humane and moral! Yes, because the world approves, supports, and finances the genocide we are being subjected to, legislates it, and gives reasons for for 58 days! While we are a people who have been living on occupied land for 75 years and are still searching for our rights and communicating our voice to the world!

My message to the world: You are not innocent of what is happening to us, you as governments or peoples that support Israel’s annihilation of my people. We will not forgive you, we will not forgive you, humanity will not forgive you, we will not forget, even if we die, the history will never forget .

Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek said that Kanye West’s music would not be pulled from the platform despite his antisemitic remarks and other companies cutting ties with him

i want things to change

i want a different life

today was a shitty day/week

i don’t want to live like this

i want to be somewhere else in life

i’m not where i want to be yet

Wack

Unfortunate (can be shortened to unforch)

Sub-par execution

I would prefer the opposite of this, actually

Not a fan of this approach

'Deep Sigh'

Can we talk about the unique experience of genuinely not knowing what haircuts to even consider when you’re black??? Because like… “short hair” happens with both black men and black women, bald/shaved happens with both, long happens with both, braids and locs happen with both, afros happen with both

Sure, I can look up pics of Black men with a buzz cut but 99.9% of them are gonna be cis Black men, folks I look nothing like. And if I add in trans, I’m scared that instead of getting articles about hair cuts, I’m gonna articles about violence we’ve faced over these past few years.

I wanna see sites and articles discussing Black hair and styles for Black trans people. If there’s a site for it, I’d like to know dearly and I want that shit to be boosted to high hell because resources for Black hair, let alone for Black trans people aren’t really around. Especially when it comes to Black folks with 4c hair, like myself.

I’ve sort of had to… make things up as I go along. Like you, I was told repeatedly that my hair texture does not look good when cut short. It took me a very long time to want to try a shorter style as a result. It took me even longer to say fuck it, big chop, and shave my head bald. There. Starting fresh.

What I’ve found has been working for me is to first figure out what hair texture you have. I find just googling “black male hairstyle” will get you mostly 4c hair which is great for those who have it and the facial structure to match! And less great for those who don’t! With me having 3b/3c hair, I was able to find a number of short styles on a wide variety of faces and thus was able to figure out what worked best for how I like to look. And it did take some experimentation and trust, but it ultimately made me really appreciate taking the time to actually do my hair rather than feeling like it was this massive chore.

Once you find your hair texture, you need to do two things:

Figure out what hairstyles you like best with your hair texture. Avoid gendered terms if you can. If you want a short style, look for short styles. If you want a long style, look for long styles. BLACK MEN CAN AND DO WEAR THEIR HAIR LONG frequently as an afro, braids, or locs. It’s up to you to then decide if that long look is something you’re interested in, and how to masculinize it if so. Personally, I prefer the ever popular shaved sides look, and eventually will be getting braids or locs with the length on the top depending if my 3b/3c hair will actually cooperate with locs. I did the fro look for a while and I’ve had cornrows but for the most part I put some product in it and wear my natural curls that way. Protective styling is a big big thing with black men even though it’s mostly only spoken about in the context of female styles. I had a really long conversation with a black coworker about protective styles and how he chooses to do his hair, which is actually longer than mine.

And, figure out the best care for your hair texture. For me, I have a rotating schedule of oil to rub into my scalp and shea butter pomade to style with when wearing my hair natural. All those selfies of mine, if my hair is free, it’s got one of the two in it. I got a lot better about protecting my hair at night, using a leave-in overnight and the day after wash day. Being consistent on the timing of wash day. I use black owned shampoo and conditioner in my hair made specifically for black men. I use a durag and a sport cap to protect my hair on days when its most prone to damage. My hair has never been healthier and I’ve never been happier with the way I can wear and style it.

It was a huge transition for me because I used to have waist-length hair and then shaved my head bald about a year and a half ago to start over and build a better routine than semi resentment from the ground up. 

With your 4c hair I would say to take a glance at these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=4c+short+hairstyles&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiN74vNxP_xAhVND98KHe_NBZoQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=4c+short+hairstyles&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECAAQQzICCAAyAggAMgIIADIGCAAQBRAeMgYIABAFEB4yBggAEAUQHjIGCAAQBRAeMgYIABAFEB4yBggAEAUQHlCvugNYr7oDYIO8A2gAcAB4AIABVogBVpIBATGYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ8ABAQ&sclient=img&ei=UAn-YI2HKM2e_Abvm5fQCQ&bih=811&biw=1368&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS881US881

https://www.google.com/search?q=4c+short+hairstyles+masculine&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjf34_pxP_xAhWkfN8KHRBQBgUQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=4c+short+hairstyles+masculine&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoCCAA6BAgAEB46BggAEAUQHjoGCAAQCBAeUNKKBFi6owRgsaQEaABwAHgAgAF-iAGuBpIBAzkuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=iwn-YJ_uGqT5_QaQoJko&bih=811&biw=1368&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS881US881

https://www.google.com/search?q=4c+short+hairstyles+male&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwje2rGLxf_xAhXCBd8KHdpUAZcQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=4c+short+hairstyles+male&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIGCAAQCBAeOgQIIxAnUMWlA1jYtgNgi7gDaAJwAHgAgAFZiAGVBpIBAjExmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=0wn-YJ6lEsKL_AbaqYW4CQ&bih=811&biw=1368&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS881US881

As there are a number of different styles besides just shaving your head completely bald, and depending on your comfort level, you can try out a good deal of them before making a firm decision on what exactly you want your head to look like.