World Shaking!

Know Your Rights

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting

And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster

And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself.

And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men.

And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.

@clexapickupline via Twitter

1. The “Lexa and I” line wasn’t in the original script for 3x05 – it was improvised by Eliza Taylor so the post-production team decided to keep that version for the final scene.

2. Lexa crying during the love scene in 3x07 wasn’t scripted it was all improvised by Alycia Debnam-Carey to bring more emotions to her character Lexa.

1. There are several ways to classify the large cats, one of the more useful ones is into the roaring cats (tigers, lions) and the purring cats (bobcats, lynxes). The puma (also known as the mountain lion) is the largest cat that purrs. I’ve heard it up close, it’s amazing. A cheetah’s purr sounds like an idling motorcycle engine.

2. Kangaroos cannot move their legs independently of each other, they have to move them in sync - when they’re on land. When they’re swimming, they can move them separately. Hopping is their most efficient way to move - a walking kangaroo is awkward as hell. They swing both legs forward using their tail as a third leg to prop up while their legs swing.

3. People often think that flamingoes’ knees bend the wrong way. They don’t - the joint you’re seeing in the middle of their leg isn’t their knee, it’s their ankle. Their knee is up by their body, and it bends the same way ours does.

4. Giraffes only sleep 1-2 hours a day.

5. Bald eagles’ vocalizations are not what you expect. When you see a flying bald eagle in the movies and hear that majestic caw sound? That isn’t an eagle, it’s been dubbed over with another bird, usually a red-tailed hawk. Bald eagles actually sound…not majestic. Kind of like if a kitten could be a bird.

6. Elephants are one of only a handful of animals that can pass the mirror test - in other words, they can recognize their own reflection (and not think it’s another animal, as dogs and cats usually do). They tested this by placing a chalk mark on an elephant’s forehead and then showing it a mirror. The elephant investigated the mark on its own forehead, indicating it knew that it was looking at itself.  The only animals that pass this test are the higher primates, the higher cetaceans (orcas, dolphines), elephants, and weirdly, magpies.

7. One-fifth of all the known mammal species are bats.

8. A kangaroo mother can have three joeys simultaneously at different stages of development: an embryo in her womb (kangaroos can do what’s called embryonic diapause which means sort of putting the development on pause until she’s ready for it to develop further), a joey in her pouch attached to one nipple, and a joey out of the pouch on the ground who nurses from the other one. The amazing thing? Each of her nipples make different formulations of milk for each joey’s different nutritional needs.

9. Bonobos, our closest genetic relative (they are more closely related to us than they are to either chimps or gorillas) are almost entirely non-aggressive, matriarchal, and use sex to solve all their problems. They engage in both same and opposite sex interactions, non-penetrative sex (oral, rubbing, manual) and with any age. That’s an interesting area to work in, lemme tell you.

10. Tortoises have super loud sex. Like, really loud.

11. All grizzlies are brown bears, but not all brown bears are grizzlies (grizzlies are a sub-categorization of the brown bear).

12. Reindeer are the only deer species where both males and females grow antlers. The males shed theirs the beginning of December, the females shed theirs in the spring. So all of Santa’s reindeer are girls, heh. I love telling little kids that.

13. If a rhinoceros knocks off its horn, it grows back faster than you’d expect. One of ours, Rosie, has knocked hers off twice.

14. Gorillas get crushes on each other. And on the humans that take care of them. Male gorillas also masturbate. I don’t know if the females do, I’ve never seen it. Sometimes it’s like a soap opera up in there.

15. Langur monkeys are silvery-gray in color - their babies are bright orange. Like Cheeto orange, I do not exaggerate.