I Should Put Something Clever Here

I wrote a master’s thesis on intentionally single people, and the number of them that said in various ways, “I didn’t know not dating people was even an option at first” was absolutely tragic. They honestly thought they had no choice and it never occurred to them that opting out was even a possibility available to them.  

People honestly believe these are life experience you are required to have AND THEY ARE NOT.

Shira is in the emergency room with a very bad infection after being forced to live on the street after surgery.

We are approaching the beginning of the month, and she urgently needs the €600 for the house rent before the 1st. Please, we kindly ask for your help and support. We are truly in desperate need of assistance at this difficult time.

We have raised €234 out of the €600 needed for the house rent. Please, please share this with others. We only have a small amount left to reach our goal.

Come on folks, every little bit helps. Lets not put her back out on the streets!

Unfortunately, because of her medical condition—which is very difficult to treat and continues to show noticeable deterioration—there is a constant fear that she may lose her housing. She already lost her first place to live, and now she is staying in a shared house, renting a room with someone else. The rent is €600 per month. Please, we urgently need to raise the €600 before the first of the month. So far, we have only managed to collect €14. Please share her story and support if you can. She genuinely needs help.

"Please help me. I am honestly terrified. I feel constant panic, my stomach is in knots, and I keep vomiting from fear and stress. I barely have any food to eat, but what scares me the most is losing the place where I am staying. No one seems to have mercy anymore. If I cannot pay the €600 rent, I will lose the only place I have. This is the only place where I keep my clothes, my medication, and where I can sleep temporarily while I try to recover and get my health back on track. Please, I have to pay the rent at the beginning of the month. I am begging for your help. Please share this message and help me reach anyone who might be able to assist. Thank you from the bottom of my heart

one views any engagement with your assigned gender at birth as like, being trapped in a prison of your own making,? as using the tools of the enemy or whatever. and the other is "yes my assigned gender is a prison, it is a prison the outside world is constantly enforcing on me and i would like to be able to talk about that a little thanks"

so you get this tension, where one side (made up of predominantly people who aren't trans women) says "the ideal world is one in which you can be whatever the fuck you want forever! so call yourself anything you want as long as it makes you happy, you can be an afab trans woman if you want it's all made up :)" and the other side says "hey hi yes i broadly agree with you on the whole ultimate gender liberation front, but we do not live in an ideal world and transfemininity is uniquely demonized even as far as trans identities in general go, so i would appreciate it if maybe you didn't act like our identity and oppression was something made up that you could just put on and take off whenever you like? we sure as fuck can't do that."

and then the other side goes "hey all these trans women are invalidating us! why are they gatekeeping and being so exclusive! assigned gender at birth shouldn't matter so why are you acting like it does!?"

and they say this while we live in a society where your assigned gender at birth very much does matter, and if you're a trans woman it is borderline impossible to escape that.

it's like an is-ought problem where since we're not acting like we already live in a gender utopia where one's relationship with assigned sex and gender is completely arbitrary, we're treated like the enforcers of the gender binary.

the model of dysphoria borrows from the social authority of psychiatry which takes things that are normal human experiences and marks them as deviant. thus, for someone inclined to distrust her own experiences, the explanatory power of such a thing can serve to motivate action very well. this is why you are deviant/wrong (diagnosis), this is what you need to do to make it better (treatment). it is also true that transitioning will make your life better.

but also this kind of sucks, for a variety of reasons.

for one thing, i think people are a bit too inclined to place unearned scientific credit on pseudoscientific diagnosis (you know the first dsm was mostly just shit they made up but wrote professional sounding enough that people believed them? and that's the basis of each subsequent dsm?). i do not think 'having or not having dysphoria' is well defined and thus it does not meet my standards for "basis for organization"/"group to focus materialist analysis upon". diagnosis isn't real, except as a performance required to access medication.

Drawing inspired by the fic of @aliesafenlock "Her Heart is Fit for Home"!!

I love this fic so much and who doesn't need a bit of Susan!Danny in their life? And here's a close up because I'm kinda proud of their expressions:

The snippet that got me:

“Do you dance, Mrs. Danvers?”

Her reverie broken, the housekeeper scoffed at the unexpected question. “Who would want to dance with a withered-up old woman like me?”

“First of all, you are neither old nor withered,” Mrs. de Winter countered. “And secondly, I would! Very much,” she added with a smile.

“Madam.” Mrs. Danvers was taken aback. “Surely you’ve got better things to do with your time.”

“If my memory serves, I did not get to dance at the ball,” the young woman pointed out reasonably, “so you owe me at least one dance, Mrs. Danvers.”

I can't be seriously considering this, the housekeeper thought as she prepared a polite refusal, but her voice caught in her throat as she took in Mrs. de Winter looking at her expectantly. Her eyes were sparkling with hope, her hand extended in a silent invitation, and Mrs. Danvers felt her resolve evaporate. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing Mrs. de Winter today as she had done in the past.

“All right then,” she allowed softly. “Perhaps just this once.”

Mrs. Danvers took the young woman’s outstretched hand with some trepidation, expecting it to feel awkward and ungainly. She became acutely aware of how comfortably their bodies fit together as her free hand rested on Mrs. de Winter’s waist. Mrs. Danvers led instinctively and was relieved to find she still knew her way around a slow dance. Her initial reluctance gave way to a quiet joy as she watched her companion’s eyes gleam with delight. With every step they held each other a little closer, and the housekeeper began feeling light-headed.

really makes you wonder why they're so shocked about sex tourism, like of course you can do depraved shit you're waving money (valuable money too) in front of poor imperialised people. it's almost less empathetic to be shocked by it than to understand why it's such a common thing.

and the attitude that tourists get like "oh everyone's just after my money" and paranoia around getting robbed like of fucking course people want your money you're wearing a luxury watch in front of subsistence fishermen, you're showing off how much money you have even just as a regular citizen of empire to people who'll not only never see a cent of it, but who actively are exploited to make your country rich.

from the Nick DeWolf Photo Archive

Miss Indian America Pageant

Sheridan, Wyoming