📺 Forgotten Television

The Witch appeared in The Pogles, a six-part stop-motion story created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and first broadcast in 1965.

The story followed Mr and Mrs Pogle as they protected an abandoned baby carrying the silver crown of the King of the Fairies. A sinister shape-changing Witch wanted the crown for herself.

After its original broadcast, the BBC considered the story too frightening for its intended young audience. The six episodes were not regularly repeated, and Smallfilms was asked to create something gentler.

The characters returned in 1966 as Pogles’ Wood. The Witch disappeared, while Pippin and Tog joined Mr and Mrs Pogle for quieter stories about woodland life.

The first image shows the surviving original Witch puppet created by Peter Firmin. The final colour photograph came from the glossy Pogles’ Wood storybooks—the television series itself was entirely black-and-white.

All six original episodes survive.

Shoutout to people who prefer to be called transsexual instead of transgender.

Shoutout to people whose identities technically fall under the transgender label but prefer not to use it.

Shoutout to people whose identities technically fall under the nonbinary label but prefer not to use it.

Shoutout to people whose pronouns don’t align with their sexuality or gender.

Shoutout to people who use contradictory labels.

Now, I turn 31 in about a week.

I sing in my car at night to the angsty mixed CDs I made as a teenager, but now with a voice that I can feel rumble in my chest precisely where that heavy feeling used to sit like a bag of concrete.

My beard tickles as it blows in the wind, and my lungs are so full because they are no longer bound.

I sing, and I drive home after kissing someone goodnight who sees every part of all that I am and all I am not and does not flinch.

I go to bed sober.

And everything is not okay. But everything is better.

And I wasn't supposed to be here anymore, after I tried putting myself back in the closet very literally and permanently that October over 10 years ago.

But sometimes belts break. Knots give way.

And now here I am.

Driving and singing, as loud as I can.

Young trans guys, it is absolutely imperative that you stay alive.

like this is genuinely fucking embarrassing for Y'ALL. if the fact that trans men have uteri and will talk about it and have feelings about it is this goddamn upsetting, go work on that yourself. i need y'all to reflect on why you love hallucinating the worst possible intentions when it comes to anything and everything a trans man does. this is so extremely a non-issue y'all just want to be an issue because the idea of trans men doing anything but quietly pretending to be cis men with extra steps triggers your internalized anti-transmasculinity.

not a single trans person on EARTH needs ANYONE'S permission to feel any kind of way about their sexed traits. not trans women or nonbinary with their penises, not trans men or nonbinary with uteruses, nobody. "its bioessentialist" TO HAVE?????? AN ORGAN YOU WERE BORN WITH AND WHICH IS HIGHLY STIGMATIZED AND SO HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT IT YOU EXPRESS THROUGH ART??????????????????? oh cry me a goddamn river. you know what you are soooo right let's ban every trans man from ever talking about having a uterus or abortion or pregnancy, because its kind of bioessentialist and transmisogynistic to talk about the highly stigmatized body you have!!!!!!!!!

to quote a person in the notes' very shitty defense of why this tattoo is "bioessentialist":

The replies on this post are absolutely full of trans men defending the bioessentialist back tat. Because it’s been buried in sealioning and mansplaining, I’ll say it again: if a trans woman got a tattoo like this depicting any of her cagab’s reproductive organs, she’d be put on a sex offender registry (or perhaps a kiwifarms thread). You people KNOW this tattoo looks terfy. It’s impossible to ignore. And that’s why you need to tie yourselves in knots to pretend it isn’t.

that a trans woman would get shit on for having a tattoo of her genitals (which i would also defend btw. i think trans women should Also be allowed to have art about their sex traits on their body, i don't think art of penises should be seen as inherently evil or disgusting) is irrelevant to why this tattoo is supposedly so bad. "trans women couldn't do this!!!" okay? that's unfair but it is, i cannot express this enough, not this guy's fucking problem.

i am Positive that there are cis people who would also freak the fuck out about this and bitch and moan and make a big transphobic stink about it, too. i don't know if you guys have noticed, but anytime a company dares to put top surgery scars on any kind of advertising, people have a meltdown over "celebrating the mutilation of young girls." transphobes are not normal about trans men either!

"people KNOW this tattoo looks terfy" i think ceding the grounds of ANY art made of one of the most stigmatized and controlled organs in a human body to TERFs is fucking stupid and misogynistic! & i also know if a cis woman did this y'all would not care even half as much, because you are all just swept up in the queer community's most recent Crabs In A Bucket discourse and you jump at ANY chance to paint trans men as evil transmisogynists rubbing their uteri in poor trans women's faces by virtue of. checks notes. talking about having their ability to have an abortion legally denied which can in fact kill people.

i do not know how to tell you people this any clearer

Anyway here are my favorite notes

Exhibit A: The very feminist take that people socially/medically/legally classed as female aren’t oppressed on the basis of being socially/medically/legally classed as female.

Exhibit B: Seeing a non-sexual image of a trans man and immediately thinking about him bottoming. Because sexually objectifying random people for no reason is, again, very feminist. 🙄

Someone says something like:

"Trans women are often viewed by society as being predatory men and this stereotype is incredibly harmful to trans women"

This is reasonable and true, it is backed by the material realities and experiences of trans women.

But what if someone responded with:

"Remove the word "trans" from this sentence and it sounds incredibly stupid! Women (cis women) aren't viewed by society as predators! Any trans woman who says she's been viewed as a predator for being a woman must not understand how the world works!"

We can agree that this is a ridiculous argument that ignores the reality of being a trans women in favor of projecting a cis-hetero-patriarchal view of gender onto trans women, while invalidating those who don't fit that framework.

"trans men identify with their sex too much" and it's just a trans man having a tattoo of an organ he has.

"this is literally the same as having a nazi swastika tattooed on you" what. what are you even talking about.

"trans men are so fucking whiny and bitchy about everything like oh my god shut up!" you're a misogynist. lmao.