alonestuckinthestars

[alonestuckinthestars]

this is your gentle reminder to stop fighting against your adhd and instead structure your life around it

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

its not stupid if it works! our brains literally have a chemical deficiency. you are allowed to accommodate yourself. go forth and stop making your life more difficult than it has to be because "this shouldn't be this hard". it is hard, so make it easier.

[alonestuckinthestars]

Connected so deeply with the nerdy loser guy characters in media growing up only to find out I /am/ the nerdy loser guy

[alonestuckinthestars]

hi I would actually be super interested in your thoughts on in what ways butch=/=masc!! I've recently been toying more with the butch label but I'm a little lost I feel. I would really appreciate it, but no pressure! thanks for your awesome blog

Okay, so I've been thinking about this ask for months.

The easiest and simplest answer is that masc is an adjective and Butch is a noun. You can identify any stranger on the street as masc, but Butch only comes with self-identification. Butch is a non-binary label that relies purely on self-identification.

That's the most widely applicable answer.

If you've studied Butch literature then you know that there are generally 4 kinds of Butches; Cis Butches, Transmasc Butches, Nonbinary Butches, and Transfem Butches. There's also the secret 5th Category of Gay Man Butches but I'm not gonna cover them.

Butch is a gender all on its own, and it is almost completely self defined. Take, for example, the life of Leslie Feinberg. She started as a cis butch and then he transitioned to a transmasc butch. Utimately, zie settled on being non-binary. Hir gender, presentation, and self understanding radically changed over the course of hir life, but zie remained butch because zie said zie was.

That's the important part.

I think one of the issues that plagues (amateur) academic studies of Butchness is the gender binary. I've seen Butch get defined as both 'Masculine Femininity' and 'Feminine Masculinity.' In my opinion, Butch is Butch and its closest cousin is masculinity.

This answer is useless to baby butches. If you're a baby and looking for answers, hit the books or the bars or the home depot. If you can't find an elder to talk to, read. Once you've read, do what feels right to you. No two butches are the same. And butchness is not tied to your sexuality. There are lesbian butches, ace butches, bisexual butches, and straight butches. It doesn't matter who you fuck, it matters who you are.

In conclusion, you know masc when you see it and if you ask someone nicely you'll find out whether they are butch or not.

[alonestuckinthestars]

"haha every transmasc had a transmed phase" no the fuck we did not

[alonestuckinthestars]

Mizu when they get even angrier almost everytime they get called a girl (by other men) but still feeling kinship with women even when these women perceive them as a man.

Also they just bind almost all the time??? There's moments where they definitely could have taken off the binder but nope.

I'm watching Blue Eye Samurai and I adoooorrreeee Mizu.

I have 2 episodes left to watch but so far at no point does Mizu say explicitly that they're a woman- they just perform whatever gender they need to perform at any given time. And when they're by themselves gender is just pointless. And even if they do end up explicitly saying they're a woman they're still fucking with gender in a way everyone else in the series doesn't. And I love that.

I love them for many other reasons also but this one is a pretty big one. Lmfao. I love how firm and badass they are, I love their anger at everyone and the world cause same, etc

[alonestuckinthestars]

I'm watching Blue Eye Samurai and I adoooorrreeee Mizu.

I have 2 episodes left to watch but so far at no point does Mizu say explicitly that they're a woman- they just perform whatever gender they need to perform at any given time. And when they're by themselves gender is just pointless. And even if they do end up explicitly saying they're a woman they're still fucking with gender in a way everyone else in the series doesn't. And I love that.

I love them for many other reasons also but this one is a pretty big one. Lmfao. I love how firm and badass they are, I love their anger at everyone and the world cause same, etc

[alonestuckinthestars]

I just discovered that there was a person who was afab and ended up joining the russian army by the name of Alexander Durov in 1806.

Born a woman, Nadezhda Durova (birth name) ran away from home and joined a light cavallery regiment dressed as a man.

After his identity was uncovered, the russian tsar summoned him to the palace at St. Petersburg, where he impressed the tsar so much that he awarded Durov the Cross of St. George and promoted him to lieutenant in a hussar unit.

He always referred to himself as a man and was upset when people called him a woman.

He signed letters with his male last name.

He expressed feelings of disgust towards his sex and how that worried him a lot.

He never married willingly and adopted many dogs and cats.

He only danced with women when attending a ball.

He asked to be buried under his male name Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov but the church did not agree to that.

I never saw him in "historical transmasculine people" compilations and only discovered his story coincidentally.

Unfortunately, historians still adress him with female pronouns, although he did not want that.

Let's remember him together. We won't allow him to be forgotten.

I'll probably add onto this post later or make a better one but you can read a lot on this wikipedia article:

[alonestuckinthestars]

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

[alonestuckinthestars]

Realized this week I might be a repressed gay trans man considering I used to engage in mlm fics / ships and all as a teen and connected to gay male characters more than literally anything else, envied gay men and all that and then dropped that shit cold when I realized I ''should stop doing that cause I'm a cis straight girl'' later on :)))))))))))

[alonestuckinthestars]

considering how many transmascs were legitimately way angrier BEFORE starting T and have since calmed down significantly have we perhaps considered that maybe the reason so many cis dudes are angry and aggressive isn't because of testosterone but maybe. like. personal issues. unmet needs. a social climate that teaches them that there are only like three acceptable social outlets for men max and one of them is being angry and shouting

[alonestuckinthestars]

Edit: at the suggestion of @fritzllang​, I have made a playlist! It has these fifteen songs, but I might add some others too.

[alonestuckinthestars]

Early Warning Signs of Autistic Shutdowns

Neurodivergent_lou

[alonestuckinthestars]

Meltdowns and shutdowns

For the longest time I've been trying to figure out what meltdowns and shutdowns look like for me now as an adult and I think I'm starting to get somewhere with more clarity lmfao.

Meltdowns

I used to have very angry and intense outward meltdowns as a kid and even well into my teens, and I can recall a few other instances of just crying meltdowns. Because of the flack I've gotten from my angry meltdowns I feel like I internalized them over time, and now at moments where I /would/ have had outward meltdowns before instead I keep it all in.

There's a specific tension build up in my chest, my blood is boiling and my eyes may well up in frustration. My mind is stuck on whatever situation triggered it, often something minor or insignificant to everyone else, and I would want to scream, cry, kick stuff, be destructive to myself and others, in all the ways. When I was a kid I'd do it, but now none of it gets externalized and instead I curl up in a ball and spiral until I can calm down. If someone interacts with me when it happens though, I'll be snappy, and if they get snappy back, all hell breaks loose.

Luckily this doesn't happen often anymore and if it does, I live alone so I don't have anyone to poke at me to the point of blowing up.

Shutdowns

I think my shutdowns are the specific moments I always thought were depression, because when they start I feel completely hopeless and desperate, like life is so fucking hard and not worth living, like nothing will ever get better, just completely miserable. I'm extremely distressed. Gradually these thoughts stop and I just get completely numb and it's hard to even think.

I get severely exhausted, exhaustion that is so deep in my body it hurts and feels like my body is rotting. The sensation is so BAD I just want to sleep. I lie down in bed and just scroll mindlessly until sometimes I can't even stand to read/watch/listen to anything anymore, at which point I drop the phone and can't stand myself or anything anymore.

I'm someone that talks a lot to myself at home and in these moments I'm just quiet. Speaking is difficult and would take too much energy out of me.

This usually resolves within a few hours or a day, and very suddenly too. Like a switch gets flipped, and suddenly I feel positive and like myself again.

[alonestuckinthestars]

Just to add on cause I've been thinking about this recently:

There's a difference between venting about common problematic behaviours influenced by white supremacist patriarchy and dehumanizing a whole group of people because of your frustrations.

For instance there's a difference between genuinely venting about men mansplaining or committing sexual violence, and making sweeping generalizations like "men have no depth / men are simple-minded".

The first is calling out problematic behaviours, while the latter is dehumanizing a whole group of people and further alienating yourself from them.

If it would be unacceptable said about women, why should it be acceptable said about men?

Essentially to reiterate on what has already been said; there's a difference between "I hate men" (the abstract figure representing patriarchal violence) and "I hate men" (the living and breathing humans as capable of thought and feeling as you in your community)

-

On a personal note as someone who used to say "I hate men/cis/straight people" just a few years ago I've since subconsciously done away with the concept because it ultimately does nothing but bring more negativity into my life like @doberbutts explained. Even saying it in the "abstract figure representing x oppressive violence" way.

If I'm going to vent about oppression I'll be specific about it instead of just "I hate men". Instead I'll say, for example, "I hate when cis people do (transphobic/ignorant behaviour)". That way I'm acknowledging the problem and validating my frustrations without generalizing and alienating myself from a whole group of people.

hey i was wondering something and i wanted to know your opinion on it

Why is it problematic to say i hate men but not white people or straight people

(i'm a trans south east asian man btw)

I'd say on, like, a casual exasperated level, its not problematic to say "I hate [x]." It gets problematic when your venting about a group becomes your sole lens of viewing + interacting with that group.

Like, its entirely alright to be frustrated with behaviors common to cishet white men and express that in a vent by saying you hate them. But... its like how people make the correct point that they shouldn't be expected or obligated to give all their energy to coddling people with power over them, but translate that into "i never have to care about a member of this group at all" which directly conflicts with just. being in a community? Like women should not be expected to be caretakers for men, but people in a community need to take care of each other. When the only way you engage with a group of people is by expressing hatred and asserting how much you aren't obligated to care about them, its easier than people think to find yourself dehumanizing them.

Which does not mean "you are just as bad as a racist/misogynist" or "you are oppressing them"; you are An Individual whose biases are not necessarily backed up by powerful systemic powers. But, for one, its very easy for those biases to be used by systemic forces: with men, misandry is very easily used to justify all kinds of violence towards marginalized men & people perceived as men. You also have situations where people will say the Holocaust "wasn't as bad" as, say, US slavery, because it was "white on white violence," or saying the Armenian genocide also wasn't that big of a deal because "it was done to Christians and Christians are always killing people" (two real things I have seen been said). And, again: if you are going to care about community and restorative/transformative justice and all that, you need to be able to give a shit about all kinds of people who you live with. You need to be able to see them as whole beings you are capable of connecting with on some level. You don't personally need to date or befriend men, but you do need to be able to give a shit about men in your community.

Its fine to feel annoyance and anger and use "hatred" to express that. But the problem occurs when people take "its okay to be angry with your oppressors and not spend all your energy coddling them" and make that the end-all be-all of their relationship with people of whatever group; revolutions can't accomplish compassionate goals when they are run on hatred. Very hooksian concept but "love" (as in "a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust", not in a strictly emotional sense but as an action) is a skill that is as vital as understanding class dynamics and protest tactics. Maybe you don't need to love everyone, but try to have the capacity to love anyone; the ability to physically care for someone you don't emotionally like is, I think, a vital step towards truly challenging and bringing down the kyriarchy.

Basically its about recognizing when your venting stops being an outlet and starts being a way for unproductive feelings to shape how you view other people.

[alonestuckinthestars]

Had to girl mode for a hot minute for the first time in MONTHS cause I've been procrastinating going shopping for a winter coat in the men's section along with other winter stuff (pants, gloves, scarf) and god that was so weird after putting the coat on and stuff. I also had to put on an old hat that's feminine cause I washed my beanie today and it's still drying so really all out cosplaying woman-dressed-for-northern-snowy-cold-weather to go grocery shopping.

So obviously I'm not super thrilled already but fine. I walk out, take a moment to tighten my boots cause they were too damn loose and I'd last worn them in April, get a heart attack as I get back on my walk and a man pops up right behind me but all is fine as I get to a bus stop with other people waiting there, catch the bus and accidentally say hi to the driver in my low voice the one time I'd need it to be high and pray to god everyone else didnt pay no mind, get a seat for one stop and then get up to walk to the door.

As I get to the back door to wait for my stop someone gestures to me and says hi as I set my hand down on a pole to hold steady. I look over and it takes me a moment but I recognize him from my job. Shit. "Hey! How are you?" "Good and you? "I'm good, I'm good" he's on the phone so there's nothing else to be said in that moment. I wish him a good evening and get off the bus shortly after.

Walk towards the grocery store and curse to myself as I most definitely did NOT want to be perceived with these fucking clothes, especially not by a coworker who's only seen me dress masc for months since coming out. Internally screaming and tearing my eyeballs out.

Will tough out the cold with my trusty raincoat and a good old hoodie underneath until i buy a damn men's winter coat. No way someone I know is gonna catch me wearing women's clothes out in public again

[alonestuckinthestars]

Waited 15 minutes for a bus only for it to arrive and choose to walk another 15 minutes in the rain because it was too crowded and fuck that shit

[alonestuckinthestars]

I'm sure this has been pointed out before, but I just gotta put this out there.

The belief some people hold that gay trans men just want to transition because they think bl is hot and are fetishizing cis gay men is basically just the transandrophobic version of autogynephilia. And it's equally as transphobic.