"it fits me like a glove, it fits me like the stars above"

Figured you might enjoy this absolutely perfect instance of a mu I wrote some time ago (the lambda isn’t half bad either.)

I knew I peaked in this instance, and I have yet to replicate it since.

jfgsuhity90q587frgethyjk75u6ywfrsgthyjt

ik heb op de middelbare (toen ik 14 was, denk ik) een boek gelezen dat ik echt nergens terug kan vinden, en ik ben de titel volledig vergeten. ik werd op een punt zo gek van de zoektocht dat ik oprecht mijn docent van toen nog gevraagd heb of hij nog wist welk boek het was maar helaas...

wat ik me kan herinneren van het boek is SUPER specifiek:

het speelt zich af in een dorp in de middeleeuwen (of rond die tijd)

het is een collectie van kleinere ineenlopende verhalen over de bewoners van het dorp, verteld alsof je iemand dit hoort vertellen in een taverne of zoeits

het was relatief makkelijk om te lezen, dus was het hoogstwaarschijnlijk geen roman

het hele boek is geschreven in wij-perspectief

For one, I'd get my dental layout scanned and then use the 3d model of my teeth to commission a giant pair of pincers where the cutters are replaced with a life-sized metal recreation of my teeth. I would use these to press bite marks on all sorts of things that a human being physically could not bite into, and emotionally would not want to.

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So, after this criticism, the group has rebranded to "FLINTA", a category that explicitly includes trans lesbians, but also: all straight women, all intersex people irrespective of gender or sexuality, all non-binary people irrespective of sexuality, all trans men, and all agender people irrespective of sexuality. The majority of people on Earth are FLINTA, and the majority of them are exclusively attracted to men (because they are straight women)! That's not a sapphic group any more!

I found this really frustrating because the problem was never the admissions criteria for the group, but rather the fact that we couldn't know in advance how transphobic the organisers were. If a sapphic group is run entirely by cis women, that is frankly already an amber flag, and to counteract it it needs to say something like this: "We encourage all trans women and all non-binary people (no matter their assigned gender) who consider themselves sapphic to attend. We know transfeminine people have historically been excluded from spaces like this and we want to make it as clear as possible that we encourage you to join." Otherwise most of us will always be too nervous about abuse to attend at all.

Instead of doing that, they responded by also opening the doors to trans men and straight women, which is an extra insult because it suggests that they think trans lesbians don't count as "lesbians" in the first place. To respond to a request to be more accommodating of trans women by saying, "sure, what the heck, in fact everyone might as well join!" is just another way of saying you didn't really want us.

And even with these changes, I still don't feel welcome, because FLINTA (essentially "anyone but cis men") is a category that has historically excluded many transfems in practice even if not in theory. A cis woman can show up to a FLINTA event wearing whatever she wants and always be welcome. A trans woman will often feel compelled to present as femininely as possible, especially because FLINTA includes a lot of cishet women who will just call you a man if they clock you because they have no tact or experience with queer identities at all. If you show up in trousers and no make-up as a transfem there's a chance you might not even be allowed in the room, so it can often serve as a gender presentation barrier that is exclusively applied to us.

Atheist alter: I split due to a dissociative process the brain has developed to handle stress