I dress myself like a charcoal sketch.

First floor: columns from Eastern Roman (Byzantine) era.

Second floor: archs from "again" Eastern Roman era.

Third floor: stonewalls from Ottoman Empire era.

Crochet! After I untangle some string

Weaving - untangle lots of string

Cross stitch - hold up, string is tangled and I am full of rage

Sewing: string tangled into tiny knots of hatred

this is literally a recreation of a painting by Nicolas Régnier which is on public display. no one is naked. no one is having sex. there is no more nudity than you would see on an ordinary family beach. this is literally and intentionally a work of art, it has been through the "appeals process" (rerun through the same fucking algorithm that flagged it before) and they decided it was Not Art.

the painting which is, if anything, more horny than the live recreation

and her child

I actually drew this for my mom, she likes the tarot stuff. I'm skeptical about it, but I can appreciate the good artistical aesthetic

Not for the sake of fearmongering obvi but like. I developed an autoimmune after abruptly stopping T (causing my E levels to spike, which some autoimmunes apparently love) and it’s kinda striking how many trans women I’ve seen around community spaces for those with the same disease. There are trans men & enbys around too but the only actual studies I could find on my disease & transgender patients were pertaining to trans women and idk it’s just interesting, one of the “solutions” to lessening symptoms was downright mortifying and I just. Really wish it weren’t widely considered a TERF dogwhistle to talk about having a disease that reacts to hormones 😭 because disabled trans people desperately need to be uplifted. Like talking about our issues is the only way to bring attention to them and if we can do that maybe someone will finally figure out a treatment that helps sick trans people without forcibly detransitioning them!! Why the fuck should we care about the opinions of TERFs when trans people are dying! But every trans person w this disease that I’ve spoken to personally tends to keep to themselves about it for fear of handing ammo to transmisogynist pieces of shit who could turn around and fire it off at young trans women to keep them from transitioning. And I can’t say I really blame them, I do the same. We’re all so defeated because most of us were either forced to detransition (an attempt to put the disease into remission) or carry on as normal (only to get sicker because nobody cares to find a solution beyond detransition) & expected never to complain or actually be ill. The invisibility & general lack of research/treatment options is made even worse since this specific illness is more common in black and/or indigenous populations so in turn it’s black + ndn trans people suffering for it, namely black trans women from the studies I’ve seen.

I just wish that we weren’t made to feel like skeletons in the closet of the trans community. And it feels exceptionally shitty to see posts like “I hope XYZ gender trans people get cancer and die” because that is the reality for some of us. More than people who haven’t been there probably assume. And those kinds of posts don’t hurt anybody like they do us.

I'm about to severely, severely over simplify some stuff here.

In a very loose sense, high estrogen hormone levels make you more prone to autoimmune diseases but less susceptible to external infections, and high testosterone levels do the inverse.

So estrogen users who are genetically predisposed to autoimmune diseases will see those symptoms start popping up during HRT, but an overall reduction in the severity of non-chronic symptoms from acute infections.

Likewise, testosterone users who previously had mild to moderate symptoms from infectious diseases like the flu will tend to see more severe symptoms, but their chronic autoimmune symptoms should lessen in severity too.

This is mirrored in the cisgender population, as well. Ask any cishetero woman about what the cishetero men in her life are like when they're sick, and watch in bewildered awe as she starts going the fuck off about how men are whiny babies who can't keep doing housework when they have a cold. Or, more compellingly, check out the handful of studies on the subject, some of which are summarized in plain language here for convenience.

This trend also contributes to why western medicine is So Fucking Good at dealing with acute injury and illness, and so fucking bad at dealing with chronic illness. Acute illness hits cis men harder and more lethally, whereas chronic illness tends to be more common in cis women.

ETSY UPDATE PART 1: Enamel pins!

Nearly all of my Life cycle of a Star pins are now up on etsy (There's a couple i need to rephoto)

https://maybelsart.etsy.com