Starfall Haven

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

Hi! I made another ask game since folks liked the last one. This one is oriented towards folks who've been plural for a while and would like to talk about how their plural experience has changed over time. However, there are no rules around how old or experienced you and your system have to be. If these questions resonate with you, then you can participate!

As before, all systems are welcome to participate as long as you respect the spirit of the post and don't drag discourse onto it. Feel free to copy and paste this wherever with or without credit, a bunch of these questions were lifted from other places anyway. I tried to pick or at least phrase questions to be as inclusive as possible, but I've almost certainly missed things - plurality is diverse and my system only experiences a small corner of it. I encourage people to make their own ask games!

🚂 (train) - How has your understanding of yourselves, and of plurality in general, changed over time?

⛵ (sailboat) - What are some things that were important to you that no longer are? Or things that weren't important to you that are now?

⛴️ (ferry ship) - What changes in the plural community have you observed over your time there?

🚌 (bus) - How has your system specifically changed over time? What about individual members? (If they want to answer!)

✈️ (airplane) - What's something about your system now that would have surprised your younger selves? How do you feel about it in the present?

🚁 (helicopter) - Which things have gotten easier with time? Which things are still hard? (Examples: doubt, communication, conflict resolution, and so on)

🛹 (skateboard) - Is there an accomplishment that you're proud of?

🛴 (kick scooter) - What's some advice that you would give to your younger selves? What would have helped you the most back when you were new to plurality?

🚕 (taxi) - What would you tell or ask your future selves? What are you still trying to learn?

🏍️ (motorcycle) - What have you tried that didn't work for your system? Why didn't it work? Do you do something else instead?

🚲 (bicycle) - What does day-to-day life look like for you all now, compared to back when you were new to plurality?

here’s my piece from the anniversary zine!! please go check it out as it’s full of amazing artworks and fics!!

#one of the otters at the local aquarium sleeps with his tail in his mouth. It's very cute and charming #but when there was a stressful time (introduction to a new otter) he started chomping down on his tail and got an injury #and I think about that as like. The things that become chewing-on-yourself behaviors often start as something you do to self-soothe. #You get more stressed you do the soothing thing more frantically it starts to hurt you and you don't necessarily notice. #If you like to reassure yourself by thinking through outcomes and possibilities. The chomped-down version is a spiral of overthinking. #and you think maybe it isn't calming you down because you haven't thought through everything yet - ! #stop chomping. (via @screambirdscreaming)

#this is a good way to put what I’ve identified as pacing your cage thoughts #your friends don’t hate you. you are pacing your cage #you’re not boring or stupid. you’re gnawing at the bars of your enclosure (via @saintaurum)

#something that helped me a lot was a psych lecture that said that thoughts are supposed to be innovative #so if you're going in circles something's wrong (via @your-url-is-problematic)

#it takes some practice but you can learn to recognise when your brain is making grindy trash compactor noises (via @scholarsscribbles)

Not everyone would want to live like that, of course, but I'll bet you that a lot of people would. It's a great living situation for single people, young people just starting out, and people who are in a city on a temporary basis. Cooking at scale is significantly more time- and cost-efficient than each individual cooking or getting takeout. Cleaning kitchen facilities scales similarly well. Employ a few people who know what they're doing and are paid well to do it, and they'll keep that kitchen running safely, efficiently, and cleanly in a way that a few hundred pressed-for-time 20-somethings never could. And a lot of people simply do not care enough about what they eat to want anything else.

Moreover, not putting a full kitchen in each unit means that the units can be smaller without cutting into living space, cheaper to build, and safer. Lots of people who live alone don't cook a lot, since cooking for one is not very time-efficient, which means that for all those people the kitchen is practically just dead space. You could replace its function with a microwave and a minifridge, and if you do, you've given that person a whole extra room.

The idea that one body = one self is not a self-evident reality. It's still a dogmatic belief plainly contradicted by evidence to the contrary and not rooted in materialist thought or analysis. If we WERE being materialist about this, we would understand that a cohesive sense of self is an illusion created by some emergent property of the brain, at least from what we understand about it right now. Your sense of self is determined by your brain, which can be damaged and your sense of self changed. If someone can lose or change their sense of self, and we understand it for what it is--a result of processes and cultural understanding, because culture also plays a role in how one understands who they are--then why on god's green earth do we think that you can't have more than one? It's a construct, of course you can have more than one!

The idea that the only possible way for anyone to exist as plural being with a specific disorder that forms this highly specific way is dogma, not material reality. If we really wanted to get spicy we could understand that the diagnosis or mental illness itself is also socially constructed, as is everything deemed 'normal' or 'abnormal'.