Neurodeviant Gendervoidling

We are seeing the direct consequences of this in misogynistic baby rabies manosphere, men coercing their sexual partner into keeping a pregnancy she does not want and then being baffled and disgusted when she is not a good mother or not interested in being in the child’s life.

There is definitely a double standard between fathers who have a difficult time connecting with/loving their unwanted child and mothers who have a difficult time connecting with/loving their unwanted child. Women on anonymous parenting forums are so terrified to confess that they do not feel for their infant the instantaneous all-consuming love they have been told they’re supposed to feel, that they find their child’s presence fundamentally overwhelming and they do not enjoy childrearing. This can be the result of postpartum mental health issues in wanted pregnancies but it is also a common phenomenon in babies born from unwanted pregnancies and/or conceived under abusive circumstances and in those cases, it is often a trauma both the mother and child cannot overcome.

I often find that if a man chooses not to be in his child’s life, he is often given a level of grace that a woman who made the same choice would not be given. Absent, deadbeat or otherwise uninvolved fathers are so common it ceases to be notable, a silent shame and acceptance. But women are demonized and villainized for abandoning their children, even children they did not consent to conceiving, disregarding the trauma of carrying the unwanted pregnancy to term and having to give birth. Mothers are expected to love their children unconditionally and put them first at the expense of their own wellbeing, no matter the circumstances.

You can force someone to carry a pregnancy but you cannot force them to love their child and be a mother and when the victims of coercion and abortion bans are incapable of doing what society expects of women, they’re punished even further.

There is a great deal of nuance in this topic but fundamentally, stripping away access to abortion makes everyone fucking miserable.

Fear of medicalization is a weapon of transphobia. Lots of people actually are scared of needles, scared of surgery, or don't want to medicalize their appearance. But they're able to hold casual conversation about injections and surgeries and medication when it's about anything other than transition.

Transphobia trains people to think of the grotesque parts of medicalization as a kneejerk reaction to mentioning a procedure. When you talk about an estrogen shot, you imagine the needle piercing the skin. When you talk about SRS, you imagine the skin being sliced into. When you talk about laser, you imagine the burning of the follicle.

Does that imagery give you a gut reaction? Does it make you uncomfortable? Does it make you squirm a little? Cuz I'd bet you could read those same words and screen out most of that feeling when talking about any other procedure. It's not that the fear isn't real. It's that your brain is programmed to take down its defenses against that rush of feeling when we talk about transition, as opposed to any other medical procedure. You can rationally know that transition related procedures have a ridiculously low complication rate and a ridiculously high satisfaction rate, but your mind is still feeding on that basal reaction all the same.

It's transphobia. It always is. It's decades of rhetoric about "butchers" and "mutilation" and lying about medical statistics, the imagery of little girls being carved up to be more masculine and the abhorrent description of vaginoplasty as "chopping your dick off". It invisibly seeps into people's brains, and gives them a more direct, unfiltered connection between their basal disgust with medicalization and seeing those words written out in text.

And no, you're not innocent of this if you're trans. Don't make that excuse for yourself. In fact, I would say that the call is coming from inside the house almost as much as its coming from outside. The way that some trans people talk about medical transition, even if they're positive towards it on its face, shows a connection to the grotesqueness of all medicalization that doesn't happen when talking about anything else.

You know what IS an important issue? Getting called a fucking birthday boy. They get all hands on deck about it. They will write VERY long posts about how important it is you not use it, and that anyone who does must be punished as severely as possible

There's only one explanation. The lives of trans women are so worthless to them, so fucking disposable, that a trans man getting invalidated is actually more important to them. That's how these people, who demand we view them as family and allies, who think we should be ready to die for them, view us.

Greetings bugs and worms!

This comic is a little different than what I usually do but I worked real hard on it—Maybe I'll make more infographic stuff in the future this ended up being fun. Hope you learned something new :)

If you are still curious and want to learn more about OCD, you can visit the International OCD Foundation's website. I also recommend this amazing TED ED video "Starving The Monster", which was my first introduction to the disorder and this video by John Green about his own experience with OCD.

The IOCDF's website can also help you find support groups, therapy, and has lots of online guides and resources as well if you or a loved one is struggling with the disorder. It is very comprehensive!

Reblog to teach your followers about OCD

ocd: but nothing is impossible!

me: okay, sure, fine. so let's say it has a 1% chance of happening.

ocd: mhm.

me: that means there's a 99% chance of it not happening.

ocd: mhm.

me: and which is bigger, 99 or 1?

ocd: 1.

too many people completely separate disability from themselves in their mind. it's something that happens to other people. other sad people i don't want to think about. are they really even people, it's too much to bear thinking about that happening to a person... those background characters over there. it would never be me, i can't cope with thinking about that possibility.

this mass denialism of the fragility of the human body (YOUR human body) has created a whole category separate from the disabled - the "elderly." since anyone can join it if they live long enough.. no they can't be disabled. that's scary, and worse it's political. so they are just "old." so what they lost their hearing, their mobility, their heart function? that's just how it goes for old people. as if that's not a person as real as you. as if you wouldn't be devastated if that happened to you today (and it can btw). as if you won't be when it's your turn to be old, and disabled.

My grandparents lived to 98 and 103. Read that again— 98 and 103. My grandmother died 5 months ago and was born in 1923.

She was extremely wealthy. My grandfather left her millions. She paid about 13,000 a month for her care.

And her nurses abused her. She could do nothing. She could not speak for herself, feed herself, clothe herself, and the humiliation they made her endure was disgusting. When she tried to express discomfort, they gave her drugs to “keep her calm” (keep their shift easy). We fought like HELL to hold that fucking place accountable. The only reason we were aware is because we hired a private nurse on her behalf, too.

The elderly are a massive, extremely vulnerable, and disabled group. You cannot leave them out of your advocacy, you cannot leave them out of the conversation. “They’re loud, they smell, they’re opinionated, they’re rude, they make me uncomfortable”. I don’t care. I don’t care! They need your advocacy too! I want you to think, if my grandmother— who was in the best retirement home she could afford, with a personally hired third-party nurse to step in where the other carers failed, had such abhorrent care… what about everyone else? What about all the elderly who don’t have a support system?

There are ADHD representations with greater and lesser difficulties managing the diverse variety of “legitimate, functional, adult-person” activities.

and

When you’re the unfortunate type of ADHD where “all or most factors of neurodivergent disruption are fireing anywhere from 80-110% at all times,” it feels SUPER bad.

Like I know people who absolutely have ADHD but don’t really need medication (I’m sure it could help ofc/maybe) and mostly function just fine. With blips and bursts here or there that are 100% legitimate struggles and cause issues, but that they absolutely can manage with the right combination of support and personal empowerment. To the point where it’s hard to appreciate that they have the same diagnosis as me, it feels!!

These people are hard to know lol, no fault of their own.

Cuz I’m not like that

For me, every single adaptive behavior achievement is an up hill battle. I am the type of ADHD creature that absolutely needs medication to appear even slightly normal to our society, for example. Otherwise I’m annoying at best and useless to myself and anyone else at worst lol.

Not just meds tho.

I have to take supplements, I have to exercise, I have to rigorously use a planner, body doubling, I have to keep a close eye on my hydration, I have to fucking meditate, I have to cultivate and adhere to a very careful structure (which I hate doing!,) I have to have external accountability, blah blah blah, etc etc etc, forever.

I also can NEVER get depressed or I have to start all of those coping mechanisms/habits OVER AGAIN from SCRATCH.

…and the payoff is I get to be not entirely made of goo but still slightly worse [functionally speaking, not morally] than people with more advantageous adhd expressions or, god help me, any of my neurotypical friends/family lol.

That’s TOUGH. I deserve empathy for that, and no matter where on the spectrum your ADHD is, you do too.

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And as they talk about it, it’ll become clear that they’re thinking about that label because there’s something in their life that’s uncomfortable, and they can see people with that label NOT doing that thing, and they’re wondering if they have a right to also not do it.

So this is me, giving you permission. Label or not, YOU ARE ALLOWED to:

Stop dating people (of a particular gender or in general)

Start dating people (of a particular gender or in general)

Have less (or no) sex

Have more sex (or with more people)

Get married

Not get married

Plan to never get married

Have a friend more important than people you date or have sex with

Wear skirts

Not wear skirts

Wear make-up

Not wear make-up

Cut your hair

Grow your hair

Try new pronouns

Wear a binder

Use a cane

Use fidget toys

Use noise-cancelling headphones

Take painkillers (or other over-the-counter medication)

Ask for help

Not eat that food

Ask for food alternatives

Not drink alcohol

Avoid that location with the crowds and the noise

You are allowed.

You are allowed to do these things some of the time, or all of the time, or only once.

If they make you feel better in yourself, maybe someday you’ll decide to take on the label that applies to many people who do them. But you don’t NEED a label.

never has it been more clear, though, that the things so many of us write about are attempting to describe the shape of this same very real monster: the dehumanization and scapegoating of transgender women. the minimizing of our pain, the invalidation of our personhood, the violence we are met with for daring to seek safety, solidarity, refuge

empathy is the ability to feel somebody's emotions as though they are affecting you personally. for example, somebody tells you "my dog died last night!" -> you now feel as though you've lost a pet personally -> you feel grief and sadness just like the other person. not everyone has empathy. it's a trait some people develop and others don't. some have high empathy, some have low empathy, some (like me) have none.

sympathy is the ability to understand and care about somebody else's struggles, even if you don't feel them yourself. so, somebody tells you their dog died -> you realize how this affects them emotionally -> you care about this person, and are upset that they are suffering. not everyone has sympathy either! it's a scale, just like empathy.

compassion is doing something to relieve another person's suffering or make them feel better. somebody tells you their dog died -> you don't want them to remain upset -> you come up with ways to help them feel better, like offering comfort and distractions, or other forms of support. compassion is a learned trait, not something you can be born with like empathy or sympathy. anyone can learn to be compassionate, although some may struggle more with it than others; it's a skill, just like anything else.

the two types of transfem culture are "co-opted by tmes" and "harmful to the greater trans community". all transfem culture is placed into these two categories.

blahaj? co-opted. referring to each other by familial roles? harmful to the community. the term egg? co-opted. age regression? harmful to the community.

Instead we are fighting over social taboos in a community that was literally built for personal expression and defying limitations. If something's harmful to our community show me your victims. Show me how the little freaks in the corner playing forcefem are creating genuine victims posting about it on their silly little Tumblr account.

Also girls practice harm reduction in everything you do. If you're making someone uncomfortable that's fine, we do that frequently just by being alive, let alone expressing our culture. The line is when you take an action that causes genuine lasting harm to someone's psyche, reputation, or physical body. Witnessing yucky kinks or mutual cultural expression will not do that.

i came out to my grandma at the beginning of the year over the phone. She really didn't (and I knew) know what transgender was or anything but this past weekend, we were able to see each other in person for the first time since i started my transition. For being 84 years old, the chat went as great as it could have gone! She caught me as I was leaving and she gave me a silver bracelet with turquoise and coral stones. She told me that this style is what Navajo women wear.