Doodleage and Craftybits

I don’t know why but I have a legit phobia of milk.

You fools, what have you started?

(I’m not joking or exaggerating, it was pockets on dog sweaters that made me angry enough to become an Internet Feminist)

Okay. Okay.

So the thing is that pockets used to be big for everybody in Western Europe (and specifically England is where a lot of this is sourced) - they were large pouches worn on a belt (think the kind of purse a cutpurse would cut if a cutpurse could cut purses). Men wore these on belts outside their clothes, women wore them under their overdresses on a belt; the pockets could be accessed through slits in the overdress near the hips. These types of pockets were huge, large enough to carry snacks and money and oranges and workbags.

There were a couple of problems with this (from an upper-class, high society perspective). One: Nice Young Ladies Shouldn’t Grab At Their Crotches In Public What Will People Think? Two: My Daughter Or Wife May Be Planning On Running Away And Her Pockets Are Full Of Secrets (this is a plot point in the 1740 novel Pamela, in which the titular character has a change of clothes hidden in her pocket under her pillow to escape from her abusive master).

The both problems became less of a problem in the early Regency era, when the dresses shifted from being big poofy things with a wide hip to a slim, Roman-era-inspired gauzy dress like this:

You see that little bag that looks like a medallion?  That’s what started a lot of the shit that was to follow. That’s a recticule and it was basically an purse that was so fashionable that it made the whole concept of purses fashionable.

Anyway, back to a chat about privacy real quick: did you know that the concept of a post office used to be controversial because women could receive correspondence that their parents or spouse didn’t know about? There was not a hell of a lot of privacy for women in this era - a very rich woman might have a desk that she could lock, but women basically didn’t own very much or have rights to own very much so if a woman was married or lived with her parents her shit was their shit and they could do with it what they liked. Enter pockets - large bags worn constantly on the person and put under a pillow at night. Got a secret love-letter? Put it in your pocket. Saving a few coins to run away? Pocket. There’s a thesis that I can’t for the life of me find online but that I read in college called “Tye’d about my middle next to my smock: The cultural context of women’s pockets” by Yolanda Van der Krol that discusses the importance of having this private space where you could keep a bit of yourself hidden.

Which brings us again to recticules. Not only were the small, the were worn outside of the clothes and therefore were less private (it would have been much stranger to put a recticule under your pillow than a pocket - if only because being under clothes prevented pockets from getting as dirty). Recticules were “hold a couple of coins” small. They were “maybe a needle case and scissors, but not yarn that’s for sure” small.

They also came into fashion right as men’s clothing was finally settling into the three-piece suit as the standard that would last for the next three hundred-ish years. As breeches and ruffled shirts were going out recticules were coming in - as were slacks and coats and vests each with their own set of pockets for a unique purpose. In the Victorian era a full suit might have as many as seventeen pockets dedicated to things like watches and snuff-boxes and wallets and pen-knifes. Between the Regency Era and the first World War women’s clothing lost its large pockets and went through a variety of purses and small pockets sewn into dresses to fit with the changing styles (surprise surprise, the Victorians were the first to introduce “fake” pockets on women’s clothing, small flaps of fabric meant to be mostly decorative). Meanwhile men’s clothing settled into the pants (though pockets in pants became more popular post-regency), shirt, vest, tie (cravat during regency, ties as we know them later), coat, and hat style that would remain standard business wear until basically now (we have largely ditched the vest in casual environments and the hat altogether). And that outfit has a fuckload of pockets. Even in the most sedate coat-and-slacks look today you’ve got a breast pocket, an inside coat pocket, two pockets on the front of the coat and four pockets on the pants (if you add a vest and a dress shirt with pockets you’ve got even more). That is an embarrassment of pockets!

Because what happened after WWI that people basically stopped making their own clothes and started buying ready-made clothes. And at that point it had become conventional for women to carry purses. And to have small pockets. And to wear tighter clothes.

AND WE NEVER CAME THE FUCK BACK FROM THAT.

Designers and manufacturers excuse the lack of pockets on women’s clothing today by saying “well, women carry purses, don’t they? they don’t need pockets.” There’s a rather infamous quote by Christian Dior just post WWII saying “men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration.” That attitude still holds. Having too many pockets “ruins the line” of a piece of clothing - a dress with pockets is a beautiful, difficult-to-find thing (it’s getting better in the last five years). You can get “mom jeans” with pockets but it’s harder to find skinny jeans with pockets (though the men’s skinny jeans have pockets).

When you DO have pockets they’re smaller. When I first got angry about this I compared my husband’s pockets to mine by trying to put my large women’s wallet in them and found that it wouldn’t fit completely inside of a single pocket that I owned and it was overwhelmed and lost in all but the smallest of his pockets. Oh, look, I found the pictures:

This is extremely potato quality but top to bottom (women’s clothing on the left, men’s on the right) we’ve got the back pocket on a pair of slacks, the outside pocket on a fleece sweater, the back pocket on a pair of jeans, the front pocket on a pair of jeans, and the largest pocket of my jacket compared to the smallest pocket of his jacket. The photos where the wallet is on top of his clothing is where you couldn’t even see the wallet in the picture because it was buried so deeply in the pocket. I didn’t include the front pocket on the slacks because my slacks didn’t have a front pocket.

ANYWAY.

Ahem.

So what started all of this was a pair of dog jackets and a pair of jeans. I’d purchased a pair of jeans and was upset to have discovered that the pockets on the front were fake (infuriating). I happened upon some dog jackets in a store - there were “girl” and “boy” jackets. The girl dog jacket had a fake pocket. The boy dog jacket had a real pocket.

Anyway I bought the “boy” dog jacket for my female dog, bought a men’s wallet (which is much smaller but doesn’t have an awesome unicorn skeleton on it) and wrote up my very first angry blog about the patriarchy.

I’ve been something of a grind on the subject of pockets ever since.

(And to anyone who is going to drop in with “just wear men’s clothing” thank you for the helpful suggestion, I find men’s sweaters and jackets quite comfortable but I have yet to find a pair of men’s pants that fits my hips, waist, and thighs simultaneously and doesn’t have an uncomfortably low crotch that chafes my thighs. Also I’ve tried that shit and as it turns out there are plenty of employers who are happy to write you up for not meeting dress code because your clothing is “sloppy or ill-fitting for an office environment.” The boss is perfectly happy when I come into the office with half my head shaved and a skater minidress over skull-patterned tights with platform boots but can’t hang when I put on a suit.)

Thank you for sitting through another session of Yelling with Alli.

Emotional neglect can take many forms, from a parent having unrealistically high expectations or not listening attentively, to invalidating a child’s emotional experiences to the point he or she begins to feel self-doubt.

Oh.

Oh.

Bibbity bobbity boo!

ask-omnipony:

I don’t really believe this mumbo jumbo

I mean it’s a goddamn hat.

Right..?

The white rose, it symbolizes the unique beauty of all the women who wish not to be with a nice guy such as myse-

I wonder if this works with other kinds of hat…

Nothing ventured, nothing gained…

WHEEEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE LIKE A BIG PIZZA PIE THAT’S AMORREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

oh boy…….

Luckily, this nonsense doesn’t work on girls.

Observe…

And it can’t possibly work on motorcycle helmets.

I must test it.

Nothing happening so far…

What in the world?

Oh why not? This should be interesting.

Here we go!

Were all mad here in Underland!

What the hell! Never Again!

… Actually …

Alright, I gotta try this!

Can’t be that bad!

….

LOL

i wonder if it works for flower crowns?

here goes nothin-

w HAT THE

DID I JUST-

Okay Clearly something is up.

Hmm… I wonder

I’m sure nothing could possibly…

I wonder what happens when you wear 8 of these at once…

My roommate Kait runs 20 miles 4 times a week. Horses can only travel about 32 miles a day.

If my roommate ran 20 miles twice in one day (possible if she does one in the morning and one in the afternoon) she would out travel a horse.

 She is not FASTER than a horse, but if a horse was walking away from her for 8 solid hours,  Kait could catch up to it.  She could probably also walk after it for an additional 5-10 miles after the run and then stab it when it got too tired to go on.

But kait’s athletic. 

 I, on the other hand, am a fatty fat who weighs 210 and never exercises ever.

I once, completely spontaneously because i had no money for the train, walked 17 miles in the winter from one end of Chicago to the other. I had also not eaten and was wearing a backpack. It took me 3 hours, but I accomplished it with ease. If i wasn’t a chub goddess, and had eaten and it was summer and I wasn’t wearing a backpack with a laptop in it, imagine how far and fast I could have gone. 

Now. Horses can only sustain a run for about 15 miles ( at 8-10mph it takes them a little over an hour).

If my fat ass was walking towards a horse for 3 hours and it was literally running away from me. It would become exhausted after 15 miles and unless it can recover completely in 2 hours for another lengthy sprint, I can reasonably catch up to it and stab it. (not that i would ever stab a horse. horses are terrifying and should be regarded with suspicion, respect and fear)

The longest run ever was 350 miles over 80 hours without sleep.

Shapeshifters chest binder giveaways #51-55 are here!

Hello, ‘shifters! It’s springtime at last, and we’ve been busy as Ark’s new bees in the Shapeshifters studio. As the mountains turn green and the pollinators start flying, we invite you to consider new possibilities and brighter futures.

Winter can’t stay forever, friends. We made it through to spring, so have a May Giveaway.

Five lucky winners of this giveaway will each receive one $50 Shapeshifters crop top binder! (That’s your choice of these.) 

Thank you always for spreading the word, telling your friends, talking about us, and, of course, for your amazing direct support. We simply could not do this without you.

Enter here!

The fine print:

Entries from all countries are welcome.

There are three possible ways to enter. Doing any one of the listed actions will get you one entry. You do not have to do all three!

The winners will be randomly selected on **May 28, 2018**.

One winner each will be selected from Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter, and the remaining two winners will be randomly selected from the full pool. We will send emails to notify all five winners!

If any winner does not get back to us within three days, a new winner will be selected in their place.

Oh thank god, someone put it into words.

Something you’ll see asked a lot is what exactly gender dysphoria is (and isn’t), and, for good reason – it’s something not a lot of people explain well. Please understand this is in no way a 100% comprehensive guide, and I am not a psychologist, but from my research and personal experience, this is the more common forms of manifestation, as well as the things commonly mistaken to be dysphoria but aren’t actually.

Before I can ever begin, I need to define two seemingly self-explanatory words that is often the ideological splitting point of confusion for people: Sex and Gender.

Sex: Two members of one species that are needed together to reproduce. One is dominated by Estrogen (Female) and the other Testosterone (Male.) Both sexes have both these hormones, but one more than the other. Hormones tell the body to put priority in certain features and growth in the body in order to prepare that body for reproduction. This is called sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism isn’t artificial, there are very real biological difference between the male and female sexes of a species. This can be measured scientifically.

Gender: Originally interchangeable with “sex”, gender in relatively recent human history has come to largely refer to the social and cultural expectations put on each sex, known as Gender Roles. Gender Roles is the artificial, cultural tropes that have adhered itself to either sex, such as blue is for boys, girls like to wear dresses, etc. We know these are artificial tropes because those two examples used to be swapped (boys wore dresses in some time periods, blue was a feminine color). Because of the ever-changing definitions of the male and female gender roles, they cannot be measured scientifically – they are entirely artificial.

So, there are two groups of people: One that believe sex and gender are the same thing and gender should never be used to refer to these sorts of tropes, and the other believes that sex and gender should be separate as sex is biology and gender refers entirely to gender role tropes. And this reluctance to collectively decide on a definition has brought about a lot of confusion about gender dysphoria. 

People who are politically trans (”tucutes”) believe gender dysphoria is entirely about gender roles, even to a point they are denouncing the medical research as unproductive and harmful. Which would make sense if Gender Dysphoria was a political issue – but it’s not, and shouldn’t be, because Gender Dysphoria has had decades of research and support from the psychiatric community.

What Gender Dysphoria Isn’t.

Liking clothing usually attributed to the opposite sex

Enjoying hobbies that are dominated by the opposite sex

Disliking sexism directed at your birth sex

Feeling as though people will take you more seriously as the opposite sex

Wanting to be allowed to do something that is seen only for the opposite sex, but will have you mocked if you try to do it as your birth sex (makeup, not shaving your legs, etc)

Feeling disconnected from your birth sex because none of the examples of your birth sex in your family, school, or work act like you, and you feel as though they are alien-like

Feeling like the opposite sex is better because all the examples of your same sex in your life are toxic, abusive, or unpleasant people

Feeling guilty for being or identifying as your birth sex because your peers told you your birth sex or you identifying as your birth sex is objectively harmful or undesirable

Hating the way you look.

Wanting to be able to play with toys that are associated with the opposite sex, but doing so gets you called a tomboy/sissy/etc.

As you may have noticed, many of these examples of what gender dysphoria isn’t have to do with political and cultural baggage revolving around gender roles for either biological sex, and the very real psychological discomfort they can cause. But all these things are about how you relate to the outside world. 

When in reality, gender dysphoria is entirely about how you relate to yourself.

What Gender Dysphoria Is.

Gender Dysphoria, like any other medically defined condition, will vary in how the person experiencing the condition will display the symptoms. Some people are naturally more sensitive to some symptoms, and less others. Some people are not able to cope well at all and are a total wreck about them, and some manage to ignore and numb the symptoms to a point they don’t realize anything is wrong because they are so used to drowning the symptoms out. 

You see this a lot with chronic pain – some are very obviously in agony, while others have become so used to ignoring the pain that it only displays in ways that aren’t directly obvious: stress, anger, depression, etc.

The best analogy of how dysphoria often feels like is the trope of the trans person looking in the mirror, except in reverse. This trope often depicts the trans person standing in front of a mirror, the reflection showing who they REALLY are, while the viewer can see the trans person for what they really are in front of the mirror – their birth sex. But to a trans person, this feels like the opposite. Subconsciously, we’ll feel like the sex we know we are, but when the world outside of us brings to attention that we’re not what we expect ourselves to be, it can result in varying levels of distress.

Gender dysphoria will not be experienced by everyone the same, but with all medical conditions, there are still certain things that will remain consistent, even if its expression can vary in intensity. Because of this, I will offer three levels of intensity for each dysphoria symptom to try and cover all degrees of intensity. And remember, these are just examples and should not be considered a play-by-play book for situations that you need to exactly adhere with.

Subconsciously feeling your body is “off.”

Low Intensity: You know, logically, this body is yours, but it doesn’t really feel yours. You’re not sure how other people are so confident in Knowing their body is theirs. You just don’t feel this innately.

Medium Intensity: You don’t recognize yourself in the mirror. You logically know this person is you, but it doesn’t *feel* like you. Unless you have an active reminder of your body, such as pain or a reflection, you forget you’re in it. You forget certain parts of your body exist. Maybe you have attributed it to sex by now, maybe you haven’t.

High Intensity: You look in the mirror, and it makes you angry. You know something is wrong, and when you finally realize what it is (your breasts, for example) you develop an intense hatred of them, a fear of them. You hate everyone can see them, see that they exist on you. They feel foreign, like an alien. They don’t register as yours. Worse yet, you know people are assuming things about your body from the fact they exist at all.

Feelings of distress at noticeable contrasts

Low Intensity: You notice the arm of someone of the opposite sex, and how different its features are from yours. It makes you uncomfortable, but you can’t really pin why. Or maybe you can. You try to ignore it.

Medium Intensity: You’re talking to someone, and you’re really put off by the difference between your voice and theirs. You find yourself wanting to sound like them. You may begin to avoid situations online where you need to use your voice, because you don’t feel like you sound correct.

High Intensity: You’ve become so sensitive to the contrasting differences between you and the opposite sex that you begin to entirely avoid the opposite sex all together. Surrounding yourself with the same sex feels counter intuitive, but it allows you to ignore the things off with your body much more successfully.

Noticing different expectations of gender roles, and having them amplified by already feeling your disconnected from your birth sex.

Low Intensity: When in school, your class is split up into male and female groups for the gym or for a class project. You feel alienated by this, even if you can’t pin why. 

Medium Intensity: The clothing your sex is expected to wear at your age leaves you feeling exposed – it accents the features you try best to ignore. And worse yet, it draws the attention of others to those features.

High Intensity: The idea of anything adhered to your birth sex revolts you – you cannot stand being associated with it due to what it *says* about you… what others assume. Which sucks… because you like some of it. But it’s not worth the assumptions of others.

Feeling sexually awkward or inadequate due to subconscious expectations of your sexual workings

Low Intensity: You like the opposite sex, maybe bisexual or straight. But when you watch porn or fantasize about it… you find yourself placing yourself in the point of view of the opposite sex… Or you only like same sex porn of the opposite sex, yet still find yourself placing yourself in one of their point of view despite not being that sex. it just feels more natural.

Medium Intensity: You can’t masturbate the way your birth sex is “meant” to masturbate – something about it just doesn’t feel natural. You find another way to get off, maybe you mime the action of the opposite sex’s genitalia, or get off by thrusting/humping a pillow like the opposite sex would during sex.

High Intensity: You know you’re not asexual, but you functionally might as well be. The fact your genitals don’t work remotely the way you feel they should work has defeated any libidio you would have otherwise had. Your sex life is awkward – you find yourself focusing on pleasuring your partner, and politely declining when they offer to get you off. Using toys has prosthetics doesn’t really help either, sometimes it’s nice but more often than not it just results in you noticing your lack of the proper genitalia even more starkly.

In Conclusion

If you’re wondering if what you feel is clinical dysphoria and not just feeling hurt by the harmful tropes inflicted by gender roles, ask yourself this question:

You’re the last person on earth. There’s a button that, when pressed, will turn you into the opposite sex perfectly. You won’t get to choose how you end up looking, that’s decided by your genetics, and you won’t be skinnier or heavier either. There is no one around to judge you or treat you differently for either decision you make. There is no reverting the change.

Would you press it?