This is not an exclusionist blog

Many people do not believe that boundaries actually exist! This is why it's so common to give a clear "No" on an issue and get inundated with people saying "But have you tried-" They can't conceptualize that anyone might actually want to avoid X thing, so they assume that you totally want to do X and you would love X so much if only they could figure out a way around whatever pesky obstacle is getting in your way. But humanity contains multitudes, and for any given experience you consider vital for happiness I promise there are people who are Just Not Interested.

If someone is stating a boundary, do NOT talk about how sad their life must be, and do NOT try to push them! Just accept that their life experience is very different from your own, and isn't that a beautiful thing?

Barriers are different. Barriers suck. With boundaries, the only problem is other people being dicks. With barriers, the problem is the barrier itself . . . and probably, additionally, people being dicks. There's really not a way to win in the people being dicks department when you don't do something that other people have decided is Necessary For Humaning.

If someone is talking about a barrier they face, still don't talk about how sad their life must be, although it's fine to commiserate with a friend if they're complaining. It's hard! Some barriers are pretty insurmountable; the person might not ever get to do X even though they want to. And a lot of people don't believe that this kind of barrier exists either; we're very much taught that you can do anything if you try hard enough, when that is simply not true. If someone tells you that they can't do something, listen to them and respect that.

The only reason for not doing X that people really acknowledge as real are the surmountable barriers. And these are real, but even in these cases you should always assume that the person knows themself best and not give advice unless they've specifically asked for it. But if they have asked, it's chill to try to brainstorm solutions with them.

As someone who has both things going on, it really sucks that people tend to assume that everything is a) a barrier issue and b) that they personally have the solution to it. Don't do this.

The only way you can tell if something is a boundary or a barrier is to listen to people and believe them.

Example:

If you offer someone a drink and they say, "No thanks . . . I haven't really found anything that I like yet," (barrier, potentially surmountable) it is probably cool to ask them if they're open to trying something new, and if they say yes ask about their tastes to try to find a drink they would enjoy! They might like it or they might not.

If you offer someone a drink and they say, "I can't, it interacts with my meds," (barrier, insurmountable) you can say, "Aw, that sucks!" and offer them something nonalcoholic.

.•. (Trans)Nullchildhood .•.

Where one desires to have/have had a lack of childhood.

.•. (Trans)happychildhood .•.

Radeviant

Radeviant is an identity related to the concept of deviance - non normative and marginalized identities and behaviors, such as queerness, transids, body modifications, and many others.

It is being suggested as an alternative to the radqueer identity, but unambiguously equally inclusive of queerness and other stigmatized features. While the original coiner of "radqueer" included other experiences under "queersexuality" and "queer behavior" labels, the term re-coiners removed this part of the definition, and the position of other identities became unclear. Whether they "count" as a type of queerness is a topic of debate, and instead of continuing this debate, I offer radeviant as an umbrella term, a bigger group that includes both radqueer and everything else.

This term was co-created by me and an anon during a conversation on August 10-11 of 2023.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

A radeviant look at oppression

I propose regarding oppression as something resembling dice. Its different facets would correspond to different forms of oppression, such as ableism, transphobia, misogyny, while the body of the die itself is the society’s attitude towards what deviates from the norm. Regardless of the exact nature of your deviance, when the die rolls, you may end up with something else, whatever is convenient for the society to deal with you right now. For the metaphor to work the best, we must also assume that the die is rigged.

For those who are confused by my mention of misogyny here, I believe that cisgender womanhood as a class takes a middle position between normative and deviant, because, while it’s a class that is normative in relation to transgender expressions, and nobody (usually) wants cis women to stop being cis women, they are still routinely judged as “defective men” in all other contexts. There are attempts to create artificial differences between men and women that put women in unfavorable light, and really existing differences are also exploited to paint women’s experiences as incorrect and inferior. Seeing women as “defective men” is an old tradition in European philosophy that goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, where the female genitalia was regarded as an inverted version of the male.

In a similar fashion other identities and experiences that are not unambiguously included into what usually is labeled as deviant are still punished by anti-deviance norms, simply because the golden standard of what a person must be was not shaped with them in mind. So types of oppression that predominantly target them are also present in the die. The opposite also applies - people from these groups are highly likely to be victimized by types of oppression, designed for deviants. For example, cisgender perisex black women become victims of transphobia.

Presenting our take on the transfamily / transfamilial flag! We don't know if a flag has been made for this id yet so I took a try at it. Transfamily is an umbrella term for anyone who feels like they should be in a different family, different family situation, have specific familial relationships they don't have, or really any trans identity that's related to family or familial relationships.

(Moorish Idols are reef fish and naturally will seek shelter in the nearest nook or cranny if they get scared.)

I decided to flip the book around and pressed it against the glass. Fish lost it

Swam away then came back with MORE FISH

I accidentally trained a fish once through playing.

Let me explain.

The small-time aquarium I worked at about 4 years ago had a decent sized female Sheephead. Sheephead are bright red with the males sporting a black head, and get big. I’m talking almost 1m long at full maturity (and may or may not transition from female to male depending on the number of males present). Point is, even though not fully matured, this Sheephead was a bit of a heavyweight in her kelp forest tank with a length of about 1ft making her the resident Biggest Dog In The Yard. And she absolutely knew it. She would bully her tankmates if she wanted to steal their food.

The thing about this Sheephead- let’s call her Red- is that she had one heck of a ‘tude. Red was known to splash aquarists whenever they fed the tank, and at almost a foot long with a wide tail, her splashes had quite a bit of heft and would soak you from the torso down. We were advised to bring a towel or two to protect ourselves from most of the drenching. When it was my go-around to feed Red’s tank, I was fairly new to the little facility, but I had been warned in advance of Red’s penchant for food thievery. I noticed she would follow my hand movements, so I slowly moved to drop her food in a far corner, and fed her tankmates directly from my hands or by tong if they were too deep. I always made sure Red had plenty to eat, but I didn’t want her to associate the food with bad behavior, so I treated her to a bit extra food whenever she didn’t steal food. One day, she made a beeline to the surface so fast that she did a small jump, her entire head breaching the water. She wasn’t bothering her tankmates or doing anything remotely dangerous- and full disclosure, it was cute seeing a fish jump for joy- so I laughed and gave her another piece of food.

Naturally, positive reinforcement led to her connecting the dots that jumping at the surface, even the tiny jumps she was doing, meant she got more food.

This started to become an everyday occurrence, whenever I was assigned to feed Red’s tank. She would jump, just enough for her head to pop out, then she’d wait patiently for me to give her the treat she CLEARLY earned. It even got to the point that she’d open her mouth and I’d drop the food right into those massive jaws- this was preferable to her Kenghis Khan-ing her way through a shower of chopped squid like the Tasmanian Devil, as there was less risk of her accidentally (or purposefully) biting a tankmate that got too close. Red became a polite eater for the first time.

It wasn’t until I noticed she followed me around outside of feeding time that I realized Red was playing with me.