Clairevoire Drew Dog Food

Sorry to break it to you man…

This is 100% the gay supervillain music video I’ve been waiting for.

Drawing everyone in Akemi style is SO good!!

The answer is: the uterus isn't what causes your period, it is effected by your period. What causes your period and what causes trans women's periods is the same thing: the endocrine system.

HRT changes the sex of your endocrine system. Feminizing HRT makes it a female endocrine system, giving us a 28-day hormone cycle just like cis women. At the end of that cycle, the hypothalamus floods the body with prostaglandins. Those are what cause all but one of the period symptoms, because they make muscles inflame and contract. They are what make the uterus shed its lining, they are what cause intestinal cramps, they are what cause body aches, they are what cause headaches and migraines. The only period symptom not causes by the release of prostaglandins throughout the body is depression, and that is caused by your endocrine system simply not processing as much estrogen and from simply feeling like shit.

So, the only symptoms trans women don't get every 28 days is menstrual cramps, because yes we do not menstruate since we don't have uteruses. But migraines, depression, body aches, intestinal cramps, and the infamous "period shits" don't exactly add up to us having any better of a time. Except we have to pretend that we're fine and nothing is different because no one believes that we get periods, not even cis women.

Anytime you proposition someone, whether it's a long shot or a "sure thing", disappointment is a possibility. You shouldn't stop propositioning people for fear of disappointment, but at the same time that possibility has to be in your mind, and you have to be prepared to manage it. If you can't, if you make it the other person's problem, then that's a consent issue.

You have to practice the polite, friendly, "ok, no worries!" and then peace out. In an ideal world, you're super philosophical about it, you don't even feel disappointed. But in the real world - it usually means hiding it.

After that you manage yourself: maybe this looks like texting a friend to hang out, maybe it looks like cueing up a show or videogame you're excited about, maybe listening to country music - the music of pain - maybe doing something creative, maybe taking yourself out to dinner. But it's so important to learn to like your own company for such times - you must never put your hope in someone to save you from time with yourself.

I have to admit, when I see or read about men not holding it together in the face of rejection, eg many accounts of male behaviour on fetlife, I get a bit smugly judgmental. A part of me is like, "bro: man up!" But it is a tough thing to learn, and I do think men don't get as much support around managing their feelings around that - I feel like women are at least offered more advice about that.

And on the flip side, I know unregulated men are often at least a whiny, passive aggressive pain in the ass when disappointed, and not infrequently scary. There's even a micro trend of "incel horror movies" about men trying to take away women's ability to reject them, eg Obsession or Companion.

Interestingly, the non monogamous, slutty, granular-consent world of kink offers the chance for many new types of disappointment. Maybe someone only wants to do one limited thing with you, when you would like to do more. Maybe someone is fucking half the people at an orgy, and you're not in that half. Maybe they wanted to have sex with you for a while, and now they only want to hang out as friends. Maybe they only want to play with you once in a while, when they're in a certain mood. You have to be so real with yourself, and the other person, of whether that works for you - or if you need to take a step back, and switch into getting-over-that-person mode. But ultimately it's a beautiful thing, that, even when one side is thirsting for more, these customized-consent hookups can bloom. It's so good when you can look into your heart and find true appreciation for your time together, whatever form it took.

Besides just managing your own emotions, which therapy and other kinds of self help can improve, I know two things that make this better.

The first is a feeling of abundance, that there are lots of possibilities around, multiple people in the getting-to-know-them pipeline. That means hustling: getting out there and meeting people, even when you don't feel like it. Sometimes that means finding the right community, even when it takes significant travel time. And then proactively seeing if there's more there with the people you meet.

On this point, something the often-toxic PUA world gets right is that fixating on one person, what they call "one-itis", like it has to happen with my cute coworker or neighbour or rope instructor, is a recipe for disaster: both for having flatlining love and sex life, and also for putting pressure on someone to not let you down. (I hate moves and TV shows that buy into this trope, like to me How I Met Your Mother is a horror movie) Leave that person alone and think about how to make abundant possibilities.

The second is, this just gets easier with time and experience. I've had a lot of sexual and romantic disappointments, some of them super embarrassing. And I survived.

But I've also had lots of things work out. I've had people I thought were way out of my league be into me, I've had things just happen out of the blue with no effort. I've thought that something was definitely not happening, only to discover that the person was just busy or distracted and pinged me back much later (and being super chill with the initial silence or "no" vastly increases the chances of that happening). And I've been the one to disappoint other people - and being on the other side of it has given me a lot of compassion for when people have to let me down.

I will say, if you're in some kind of woe is me spiral of, "it never works", I'm doomed to always be the one who's disappointed, there's bigger problems going on, and those are not the fault of any individual person rejecting you - it's a signal that it's time to work on yourself.

Don't let fear of disappointment stop you hitting on people, in fact if you're a conscientious, consent aware person you probably could be doing it more. As long as you're doing it in appropriate ways and times, it's all good practice in surfing that extremely human and unavoidable feeling - disappointment.

PS Sex blogger and podcaster Kate Sloan has a lovely piece about appreciating one-sided, aching crushes for their own sake, as fuel for self-improvement and creativity, well worth a read. 

Disappointment is such a normal feeling to feel. But it is super vital how you decide to work through that feeling. It is never, *never* the job of the person who said "no" or "not yet" or "not like that" to spend a lot of effort to comfort you, or capitulate to your desires, just because you are disappointed. You want others to be transparent with you, always, and tell you the truth about what they want or need or can handle.

This doesn't mean pretend you're not disappointed at all, especially internally to yourself, because that will create problems in other ways. But this post is a great jumping-off point to examine what your needs are and how to get those met. Rejection often says more about the other person than it does about you, so keep communicating openly, and try again! Maybe with someone else, maybe a different activity with the same person, maybe at a later time. So long as you allow for a change in at least one of the details, you are far more likely to succeed next time--or at least learn something about you and the person you're interacting with :)

I've absolutely told people at the bathhouse or the club that I think they're attractive and I'd be down to play, and they have indicated they're not interested for one reason or another. But every single one of those people has had respect for me asking in the first place, and they've appreciated the respect I return by listening to their "no".

I met a woman who breastfed her adopted black children as a form of reparations for when enslaved black women had to be wet nurses for white children. She used to post photos on her web site until she got a lot of backlash.

One white couple, who like almost all these parents, did not have any black friends or relationships with any black people, would arrange "black" time for their children by inviting other white parents of black adoptees for African-themed parties.

The kids were all American-born black kids but they would parade them in kente cloth outfits and make them do drumming. Almost all the white adoptive parents I met thought African culture was legitimate but they had to protect black kids from black American cultural influence.

White parents often did not bother to learn a single thing about how to care for black children's hair, somehow believed black children did not need to wash or comb their hair for months would would get offended when a concerned black person would try to instruct them.

One white family told legitimately told me, without a hint of irony or shame, that they'd adopted a black boy because her husband always wanted a son who would be a basketball player.

They would pretend to be "colorblind" while aggressively removing their children from any and all contact with black institutions, black movies, black books or other aspects of black culture.

When I asked if it were fair to the child to constantly force the child to be the only black person at school, at church, at gatherings, they would tell me that they did not go to black churches or programs and it would feel fake and insincere if they joined just for their child.

They believed they could make the children culturally white and simply overlook their skin color and the way the whole world would see them. They were most concerned about their racial comfort and had no concern for the discomfort and isolation their children would feel.

And, yes, the thought the black people who showed concern, who offered to help them navigate the racial reality of America, or passed along info about black hair salons, or suggested black churches or cultural events were the real racists.

So, yeah, I decided I could not write the story and be fair, because being fair meant I would have trashed their entire existence.

Oh, and did you know that many private adoption agencies let you choose the acceptable percentage of blackness in the child you will accept. Part of the application lets you select if you'll take a fully black child, half black or just a quarter black.

Black children are always rated the least desirable. They often go to the white parents who are the most desperate, who haven't been able to get any of their other choices. So, yeah.

Many Asian adoptees have had similar experiences. I interviewed some as well. They were part of a group known as Angry Korean Adoptees.