#What would do you do if you found out your hot professor was transgender. What th. Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[lazlolemurs]

Oi mistah you transgendah

Fae out of his usual anthropology professor and enjoying his ability to lift up his shirt while working out without any fear

Fae (He/Him)

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Dr. Lauren Beach was 14 years old when she/they first came out as bisexual. Beach revealed the truth to friends and curious classmates at her/their suburban Michigan high school. The reactions varied, but not many were affirming.

"I experienced a lot of people who eroticized my attraction to femme people. It's like, 'oh, you're bi. That's so hot,'" says Beach, who has a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, developmental biology and genetics.

Other friends asked Beach if she/they were doing it for attention. Beach says only three people, including Beach, at her/their school were openly out as queer. Instead of being embraced by them, Beach received flak for her/their sexuality.

"One of the other people there who was queer was like, 'You're a fence sitter! You're a switcher. You can't be trusted, you might date men after dating me," recalls Beach.

This kind of biphobia, which perpetuates stereotypes, hatred, and prejudices about bisexual people, is not uncommon — even (or sometimes especially) within the queer community. Stigma against bisexual people stems from a larger culture of homophobia, Rory Gory, digital marketing manager of the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, wrote in an email to Mashable.

"Since bisexuals often move between straight and queer spaces, they are subjected to both homophobia and biphobia," Gory explains.

Bisexual people make up a sizable population within the LGBTQ community, given more than 50 percent of queer people in America identify as bisexual, according to the Williams Institute. The think tank does research on sexual orientation and gender identity to ensure stereotypes don't influence laws, policies, and judicial decisions. To be clear, bisexuality means a person is attracted to more than one gender. It doesn't mean bisexual people are more sexually active than others or going through a phase (two common myths).

As a teenager, Beach bought into stereotypes about bi people. But now 22 years later, she/they are a professor at Northwestern University where she/they focus on the health of bisexual people and works to dispel myths about them. Additionally, Beach co-founded the Chicago Bisexual Health Task Force, a coalition that advances the heath equity of bisexual people.

Mashable spoke with Beach, and representatives from advocacy organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GLAAD, and the Trevor Project to learn about the unique challenges bisexual people face and how to be an ally.

1. View bisexual people as individuals

It's easy to lump a single group together but resist that trap. Like anyone else, bisexual people are individuals and their personalities and preferences vary. As Beach says, "there's not one single experience of bisexuality."

For example, Beach is asexual or ace. This means Beach doesn't experience sexual attraction, but she/they are romantically attracted to people across the gender spectrum. One can be both asexual and bi, with some asexual people preferring to identify as biromantic. Although many asexual people are not interested in having sex, some may choose to engage in sexual activity; asexual people can have varied preferences and experiences. Beach's experience doesn't mean all bisexual people feel the same way.

Getting to know more bisexual people can help scrub away your pre-conceived notions. You could already have friends who are bisexual and not know it. Be open about your intentions to learn so you can tear down your misconceptions about bisexual people, Beach recommends.

"You'd be surprised by how many people are like 'Oh, I'm actually bi. Let's talk," says Beach. "From understanding the breadth of experience, you personalize people."

2. Challenge negative stereotypes

As you expand your knowledge about bisexual people, speak up when you hear people perpetuating harmful misperceptions. Sometimes we don't even know we've absorbed negative stereotypes if we're not informed, says Mackenzie Hart, coordinator of GLAAD's Media Institute, which advises media, television, and film professionals on accurate LGBTQ representation.

An easy way to interject when you hear a myth about bisexual people is to say, "Actually, that's not true, my friend who is bisexual does not fit that stereotype," suggests Hart. It can also help to arm yourself with accurate statistics to further back up what you're saying, says Madeleine Roberts, HRC's assistant press secretary. HRC is a helpful resource for these stats.

"Barsexual" is a hurtful label often used to demean bisexual people. It refers to the incorrect belief that bisexual people will only interact with certain genders when they are intoxicated, explains Hart. It upholds the myth that bisexual women are actually straight as it implies they only flirt or make out with women when drunk. It also contributes to bi erasure, which GLAAD says happens when "the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright."

You should also push back against the harmful stereotypes that bisexuals can't be trusted to commit to a relationship, says Gory. "Embrace bisexuals as valid members of the [LGBTQ] community, rather than referring to them as 'allies' of the community."

Additionally, you can be an ally by understanding certain words and promoting proper usage. For example, you can clarify the difference between bisexual and bi+. Bi+ is an umbrella term inclusive of people who are pan, queer, fluid, and those who don't prefer labels. Use the full acronym of LGBTQ rather than gay as an umbrella term for queer people, explains Roberts. By taking these steps, you can "create spaces where people are hearing these words," says Hart.

3. Healthcare providers need to educate themselves

One time, a clinician asked Beach how many sex partners she/they had.

"I was like, OK, what do you mean by sex?" says Beach. The practitioner questioned why Beach would ask this. Beach told the clinician she/they are bisexual and, therefore, needed clarification about what sexual behavior she was referring to.

"She got really uncomfortable and said 'deep vaginal penetration,'" says Beach. "She started off guessing. She said, "you seem like a nice girl. So what is it, like one or two people?"" says Beach. The provider then said, “So, what you’re saying is more than 30 or 40 people.”

"It shows how someone [in a healthcare setting] can make this jump based on biphobic stereotypes of what my sexual behavior would be,” explains Beach.

After that encounter, Beach never went back to that doctor. To this day, Beach doesn’t have a designated primary care provider.

“I have to work up the emotional energy to want to go put myself through that potential experience," Beach says about seeking out healthcare.

Beach's experience isn't uncommon. Biphobia may discourage bisexual people from going to the doctor, with 39 percent of bisexual men and 33 percent of bisexual women reporting that they didn't disclose their sexual orientation to any medical provider, according to a 2012 study by the Williams Institute. Comparably, 13 percent of gay men and 10 percent of lesbians did not share their sexual orientation with a doctor.

Providers shouldn't presume anyone's sexual behavior because they know their sexual identity, says Beach. Hart echoes this advice. A doctor once asked Hart, "Are you seeing anyone?" Hart said no. She then asked, "If you were seeing anyone, would you be seeing a woman, a man, either, or other?" It wasn't perfect, Hart says, but asking open-ended questions that are inclusive of gender nonconforming people made Hart comfortable enough to see her again.

"Even if you aren't sure of certain words... you can make it clear you aren't going to be judgmental and you understand there's a wide array of experiences," says Hart.

4. Uplift bisexual people of color

Roberts recommends following prominent bi+ people of color on social media such as singer and actor Janelle Monáe, NFL player Ryan Russell, writer and transgender rights activist Raquel Willis, and politician Andrea Jenkins to become familiar with their lives. The next step is to share their stories with your friends and family.

At last year's Academy Awards, actor Rami Malek won Best Actor for his portrayal of British singer Freddie Mercury. Malek described Mercury as gay during his acceptance speech but Mercury was actually bisexual. Willis called out the bi erasure in a tweet.

Of the four people Roberts listed, two (Willis and Jenkins) are transgender. Just like one can be asexual and bi, one can also be transgender and bi. In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality surveyed 27,715 transgender people from every state and D.C., U.S. territories, and U.S. military bases abroad and 14 percent of respondents described their sexual orientation as bisexual.

To ensure you're not erasing transgender bi+ people's identities, always use inclusive language like "siblings" instead of "brothers and sisters," says Roberts, when addressing people as if they're family. This guarantees you're not assuming every bi+ person (or anyone generally) identifies as either male or female.

Taking into account the role intersectionality plays in the lives of bi+ people is important — especially when you're looking to amplify their voices.

[rjhpandapaws]

Secure the Stage

Chapter 5: Smoke Alarm

//Tw: Withdrawal, and referenced transphobia

When Allen had offered to be Silas’s smoke distraction the last thing he had expected was his phone to ring in the evening during his classes. He looked down at his watch to find Silas’s contact name aglow on his wrist. He grabbed his bag as he patted himself down for his phone and stepped out of the lecture hall. He answered his phone as soon as he found it, “Hey Silas.” “Hey, uh,” He sounded distant and distressed, “I know its a week night and you’re busy, but I’ve already had two and I’m debating the third.” He sighed harshly into the mic, “Could you maybe meet me at the theater?” Allen looked back to the door of the lecture hall, “I have classes tonight Silas, I can’t just leave. Could you come to the university? I can have you as my guest if you would like.” He heard the familiar click and stutter of the lighter a few times before Silas answered, “It won’t be bad for you that I’m there right? I just can’t be alone right now.” “I promise Silas,” He reassured, “I’ll meet you at the student resource building alright? Let me know when you’re heading out.” “I’m waiting on a cab right now.” Silas responded flatly still clicking the lighter, “So it will be about twenty minutes. Sorry for disrupting your classes.”

Allen rolled his eyes, “I’ll meet you at the quad then, I’ll bring food and coffee and you can tell me what’s up.” He got a hum of affirmation from Silas and hung up. He went back to class and found himself distracted for the rest of the lecture. He was checking his phone pretty regularly as he waited on the text message from Silas. It was near the end of class when the message finally came.

Theater Bitch <3: I’m here and looking for the building. Allen: Alright. I’m on my way.

He stepped out of the lecture hall again and made his way to the student resource building. He swung by the bookstore and grabbed two canned coffees and a couple of premade sandwiches. It wasn’t the greatest, but it was the best he could offer since all the campus cafes were closed. Silas was easy to find once he got to the quad. He was back away from everyone else and was rolling his lighter over his fingers with practiced ease. There was a cigarette tucked behind his ear and he straightened up when he saw Allen. His was face was red and it looked like he had been crying recently. He was in a sweatshirt and pajama pants, he hadn’t bothered to put himself together. Whatever was bothering him had to be pretty bad for him not to have bothered with appearances.

“Distraction or advice?” He asked when he got to Silas. He held out on of the cans, “I know its not as good as the hot stuff, but its the best I can offer for now.” “Distraction please.” Silas responded lowly as he put the lighter away and took the offered can, “I don’t want to think about anything and my usual distractions aren’t holding their appeal.” That sentence alone left Allen with more questions than answers, but he didn’t press, “Would college classes be enough of a distraction or do you need something else?” Silas opened the can and gave a nod, “I can try classes. I haven’t taken any gen ed classes since high school.” “My next class is calculus so we should probably head for the math and science building if we don’t want to be late.” Allen said as he turned to lead the way. Silas groaned from behind him, “I am fucking horrible at math so this should definitely do the trick.” Allen was glad for that at the very least. He didn’t know what it was that was eating at Silas and even though his curiosity was killing him he wasn’t about to ask. He was just he could help. Even if it was something as simple as dragging him along to his calculus class. His professor was kind enough that she probably wouldn’t mind the guest, or so he hoped as much at least.

Ms. Ray only raised an eyebrow at the sight of his guest but didn’t say anything about it which he appreciated. It could also have been due to how clear Silas’s discomfort was, he didn’t know and he wasn’t about to ask. He took his usual seat at the back of the class and Silas settled beside him after moving the desk so they could both look at his book. It seemed like Silas would at least be attempting to participate in the class. As promised Silas was absolutely horrendous at math, but Ms. Ray didn’t seem to mind stopping to explain things to him. While he didn’t seem to understand it anymore clearly he still tried his best. It was interesting at least to see Silas’s thought process. Allen’s other two classes went similarly. Silas seemed to distract himself by burying himself in work. Which looking back shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was. In all of the time he had spent with Silas he had always been doing something. He hadn’t known Silas to ever be idle. They had eaten the sandwiches between his calculus class and his psychology class. Silas still looked occupied by whatever was on his mind. He was fidgeting with his cigarette lighter more often than before. Allen wanted to ask, but Silas had specifically asked for a distraction. He just didn’t know what to do. For as much time he had spent with Silas, he didn’t actually know him all that well.

They were walking back toward Allen’s truck and he was nearly startled by the suddenness of Silas’s voice, “I would kill for some really shitty black coffee.” The randomness of it caught him off guard, “We could go to like Denny’s or something I guess.” “That works.” Silas said with the first smile Allen had seen all night. It was far from genuine but it was better than nothing, “You can drop me off if you have other plans.” Allen shrugged as he unlocked his truck, “I was honestly just going to play games until I fell asleep so you aren’t interrupting anything. Don’t worry.” “Thank you.” Silas said as he got into the truck. He rolled his lighters over his fingers on the ride to Denny’s, pulled back into whatever thoughts had been haunting him tonight. Allen wasn’t sure what to do to get him back or to wait and see if he was ready to talk. “Would you like to play music?” Allen asked unsure of what else to do. Silas almost always had music playing, there must be a reason for that. Silas seemed to come back to himself for a moment, “Uh sure. You don’t mind if its slower stuff do you? I’m not in the mood for loud for a change.” He gave a laugh but it was humorless and unpleasantly fake. Allen hated it.

The in-dash screen gave away the artist which was one that Allen hadn’t heard of, but the playlist was titled was I Want to Feel Better. It broke Allen’s heart a little to see. The music was quiet compared to what Silas normally played, but the sound was calm and comforting. Silas was either singing or humming under his breath. Allen couldn’t tell because he couldn’t catch any of the words. Silas was back in his own head so Allen didn’t try and make conversation. He listened to the music and tried to be something steady in Silas’s moment of vulnerability. He didn’t know what to do for comfort because he didn’t know what was wrong or what Silas needed if he wanted his comfort at all. Some people simply wanted company as they worked through their thoughts. Silas didn’t really seem the type, but as it was Allen apparently didn’t know him all that well. He turned into the parking lot and Silas grabbed his phone to pause the music. It was pretty late so the parking lot was almost empty. Allen parked close to the doors and they got out. Silas hesitated for a long moment at the smoking area and Allen waited for him. He went so far as to reach for the cigarette behind his ear before he came back to himself and moved to catch up with Allen.

When they got inside Silas headed for one of the booths in the back corner of the near empty restaurant. He was playing with his lighter again, a force of habit if Allen had to guess. He at the very least tucked it away when the waitress came with their menus. The silence was starting to get to Allen and his curiosity was eating at his patience. He wanted to be a comforting presence, but he also wanted to know what he was comforting from. “Just ask Silas said after a long moment and the suddenness of it did startle Allen this time, “I can feel you staring at me.” Allen looked down at the table feeling guilty for not having a better hold on himself, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to; but I was wondering why you called me. You sounded like you were really upset earlier and it looked like you had been crying.” Silas tapped his lighter against the table rapidly and sighed, “Have you ever experienced withdrawal Allen? Its painful and it messes with everything else. Those bad thoughts you have are louder, angrier, and much more persistent. The bad feelings are that much worse and the only thing that can chase them away is nicotine.”

Allen winced suddenly feeling like an asshole, “No, I can’t say I’ve ever been through that, but it sounds horrible.” Silas gave another humorless laugh, “Horrible is a word for it.” His voice rough, not quite harsh, but close, “I felt weak, I know it comes with trying to quit, it happens every time I try to quit. I think I am stronger every time as fools are known to do. Then withdrawal comes as a reminder that am not nearly half the man I am known to be without nicotine running through my veins.” He clicked his lighter open and watched the flame dance for a moment before he closed it, “In the eyes of some I’m not even a real man, just pretending.” Silas’s being transgender was not the thing that should have stuck out to him, but that was the thing Allen found himself caught on. He hadn’t known and he doubted he would have found out if Silas hadn’t gotten so lost to his emotions. “Thank you for trusting me with all of this. I know Denny’s isn’t exactly the best place to have this conversation.” “Buy me coffee and dinner and all will be forgiven.” Silas said somewhat sarcastically. “But honestly thank you for humoring me tonight. It helped a lot.”

Allen smiled even though the feeling of guilt was still lingering, “I’m glad I could help. Also knock yourself out, I can give you food in exchange for prying into your head. It seems fair enough.” Silas chuckled and for the first time that night it seemed genuine. Allen smiled as the waitress came with their coffee. Silas ordered his breakfast and Allen ordered an omelet with sour dough toast. He hadn’t been smart enough to order decaf so he privately kissed his sleep schedule goodbye. “I think not being able to actually go to classes is part of my issue.” Silas said as he set his mug down, “Having all this extra time to spend at the theater is nice don’t get me wrong, but I smoke to think and that might be messing with me.” He drummed the fingers of one hand against his mug and reached for the lighter with the other, “I need something to do to keep me occupied. Coffee almost works, but I have seen what caffeine dependency has done to my brothers. Its better than this probably, but it seems annoying.” Allen almost pointed out that they were currently drinking coffee at one in the morning, but kept that to himself. “I mean it could be a transitional thing I suppose. Have coffee every time you feel like smoking. Would that work?”

Silas gave another more genuine laugh, “I don’t think you realize how much you realize how much coffee I would drink in a day. Though I suppose it would be worth a shot, I could probably afford it with the money I don’t spend on cigarettes.” Silas looked like he was at least giving it some thought, “Other than drinking a concerning amount of coffee, this might actually help. Thank you Allen.” Allen lifted his mug in a cheers motion and Silas clinked his mug against it, “I’m glad I could help.” “Sorry for going off on you like that.” Silas said as their food arrived, “You were only trying to help.” Allen shook his head, “I pushed you to tell me and you weren’t ready to. Thank you for apologizing though. I appreciate it.” Their conversation fell away as they ate and they made small talk on the way back to Silas’s apartment. Allen felt like he had finally learned something about Silas for a change. It was better than those usual half answers he would get from him. It was nice. As he drove home he thought tonight was good even though he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep. He sent a message to check on Silas when he got home and received a coffee emoji as a reply. It was one of those nights he supposed.

[natsunoomoi]

Holy crap. So like with the previous post I was thinking about Fushigi Yuugi again and kind of checking up on what was up with Byakko Senki cuz I haven’t checked on it in awhile and it looks like it’s on hiatus right now and she’s working more on Arata Kangatari, which is cool cuz I thought she finished that, but I guess not and she just took a break to like finish Genbu and do Byakko or something.

But also I was scrolling through her Twitter to find that she is really into this Chinese movie “Legend of Luo Xiaohei” and so I was checking that out cuz so ironic that Japanese mangaka that got her big break writing manga about an ancient China setting is interested in a Chinese movie. So just looking through her Twitter thread and apparently she found out about Luo Xiaohei from watching a CM while watching Modao Zushi. LMAO It’s amazing, but this situation just feels like an ouroboros eating itself because I have a high suspicion that her work on Fushigi Yuugi imported into China back in the 90s was probably a huge influence on Chinese creators and artists to write their own stories about their culture and helped to popularize the xianxia and wuxia novel movements in more modern times. On top of that MXTX said she was inspired by a D. Gray-man fanfic and while she mentioned that title specifically, I think in the periphery Fushigi Yuugi itself and more recently Arata were probably an influence too. Growing up a number of my Chinese friends also said they got into anime overall because of Fushigi Yuugi because it was an anime and work from Japan about their culture and arguably done pretty damn well. 

In terms of the danmei movement as well, I’m pretty sure Fushigi Yuugi was included in what started the movement as the movement was influenced by Japanese BL that came in via Taiwan, and the beginning of Fushigi Yuugi had the whole thing between Nuriko and Hotohori even though that kind of went nowhere, Nuriko dies to everyone’s depression (I have several friends who refuse to watch the rest of the series after Nuriko dies because it’s not the same), and that whole ship goes off a weird deep end with Hotohori marrying a woman that looks like Nuriko. Also, the exact reasons for Nuriko being in the harem and all that. There was a whole lot of shipping in the 90s from Fushigi Yuugi and it was one of the first series that had a male cast that was almost entirely ikemen and I think the actual first reverse harem. A number of shows probably simultaneously popularized the female gaze in mainstream anime, but Fushigi Yuugi was definitely one of them. Like literally one or two years before there was a lot of manly men and guy’s guys kind of anime characters, but beautiful ikemen, no, not really. In 2021, there are some things about the series that are a bit problematic, but it’s influence on the world is pretty significant. It was one of the first shows I’d seen that had any kind of reference to homosexuality or transgender in it and although it’s not necessarily portrayed well, the fact that it was there and that Nuriko was such a beloved character it started a conversation and helped us to get to a time where the topics she represents can be more discussed. I’m actually not even sure what pronouns would be appropriate for Nuriko because of her reasons for what she did and in Japanese the pronoun problem is actually really easy to get around because you just don’t have a subject or speaking in 3rd person is totally normal. But still, without her the minds of thousands or even millions of fans around the world would not have been opened as early to LGBT topics. Her existence, even problematic as it might be, allowed people to consider and love a character of a different sexual orientation or gender identity than their own and just open their minds to just not being a homophobic, biphobic (cuz relationship with Miaka?), or transphobic piece of shit.

Then also Genbu Kaiden and Uruki’s powers. Yeah.... I mean, also kind of with the earlier discussion, the idea of dual cultivation I don’t recall even being brought up much before in most media, but such ideas were also banned and repressed in China at a certain point. Documentation shows it was more of an ancient practice that suddenly became known about again. The book I was talking about that has it more explicitly written is banned in China has its only original surviving copy in the Japanese National Library as it was one of the books brought to Japan by scholars escaping persecution in China and bringing with them books to escape one of the many episodes of mass book burning. According to my Chinese lit professor who had us read an English translation of that book as a part of our curriculum anyway. Supposedly the translator of said book had to go to Japan to read the original in order to write the translation. There’s apparently a number of ancient Chinese texts like that because book burnings were a thing at different points in Chinese history, so if you are a scholar of Chinese lit if you want a complete picture of your field for some texts you do actually have to come to Japan to do your research. But yeah, that power mentioned in that very book Watase-sensei gave to Soi, and also the story of Fushigi Yuugi takes place in that very library that contains that ancient copy of a banned and would have been lost to the world book. If you’re asking why a “dirty” book would be something a scholar would grab to save, ancient lit scholars do regard it as a rather well-written piece of literature even though the content of it is basically taboo.

But also the Fushigi Yuugi Suzaku Ibun game is a hot mess when it comes to this same issue because if you romance Nuriko you can save her from death and my friend Hikari said she wasn’t sure if she was happy about fucking with the universe like that. (I’m not either.) Nuriko’s death was such a huge impact on the story and everything. Also, notably, most of the Suzaku Shichiseishi died, but Nuriko had the LONGEST tribute. Like Chiriko and Mitsukake’s was like a tag on of a few minutes. Hotohori’s was too even, but it was addressed more in the later manga chapters the publisher pressured her to write and in the OVA series afterward.

Also, like Fushigi Yuugi other than the Neverending Story was one of the original sucked into a book holy shit how do I survive stories. Idk if SVSSS is influenced by it in that way, but it’s fair to draw the parallels because of the similar theme. It’s just canonically Taiitsu Shinjin is not behind the the system in the book and in a number of ways Shen Yuan is more competent than Miaka. Miaka gets a lot of shit though and when I re-watched FY a second time I actually found the gripes people generally have about it make up only a small part of the series. People just talk it up so much that it seems like a huge thing when it’s not. Plus the technical canon is only the original TV series because that’s where Watase wanted to end the story and that is an emotional rollercoaster that makes you cry so good. But like there’s some other kinds of parallels as well like how toward the end and like the last two episodes you hate Nakago up until the exact moment you find out why he’s an absolute asshole, and characters straight up criticizing him about how he’s an asshole the whole damn series just gives the same kind of feels that SY gave criticizing the original throughout SVSSS. Can’t say for sure, but Fushigi Yuugi has a lot of clout in a general sense.

But yeah, Watase-sensei said that she was really surprised by the animation quality of Chinese animation these days and she thought Japanese anime was going down in comparison. Same, yo. Same. But still, her work was probably a huge contributor to the movement that allowed MDZS to exist because her art is damn beautiful, Chinese influenced, and she had one of the first works in Asia to like bring the subject of LGBT issues into the mainstream after years of oppression from mostly Western influence because in pre-modern Asia no one gave a shit before and there’s a significant amount of classical novels that address some form of LGBT issues at least in Japanese lit and like even academic documentation that notes Confucius saying that doing it with a guy was better than with a woman. And the author of the work that probably was very influential to BL back in the 90s watches MDZS. She noted that there wasn’t any in the actual anime, which is true, but I think she helped that series to exist and she watches the anime so it’s kind of exciting.

I hope it influences her to go finish Byakko, but OMG I want her to finish Arata too because I like Arata. I should try to find time to read more of it because the anime is too short and the wiki descriptions of what’s happening are so damn confusing and incomplete.

[moonkissedisms]

If suddenly she rears pulls, pitches into the lightning

if the split sky strikes splinters the glassy ground (her stride is a circle growing smaller)

when she sees the stars —all skies have storms and she has seen them

if she shies and starts when she skids when she lowers her eyes if she stops to listen:

nervous rider, beware.

—anu lakhan  

APP

✧･ﾟ(   artemis + hunter schafer + trans woman   ) 𝒎𝒂𝒎𝒎𝒂 𝒎𝒊𝒂 !!  have you seen (   morrigan ‘mora’ driscoll  ) around ? (   she  ) has been in kaos for (  four months  ). the (  twenty year old  ) is a (   college student   ) from (   dublin, ireland   ). people say they can be (   vindictive   ) but maybe that’s not too bad ‘cause they can also be (   protective  ). whenever i think of them, i can’t help but think of (  jeans ripped in the woods, the scent of the forest, dirt smeared across hands   ).  ･ﾟ✧  (  penned by chris, 19, est, she/they  ).

STATS

name: Morrigan Driscoll

nickname: Mora

age: twenty

pronouns & gender: trans woman, she/her

sexuality: lesbian

birthday: july 1st

BIO (TRANSPHOBIA TW, VIOLENCE TW, DYSPHORIA TW)

What an angry little thing. Your mother said the day you were born. No matter how she held you, no matter how long she let you lay, no matter how much you ate, no matter how much she tried to soothe you, you screamed and screamed and screamed. She said it with a smile on her face, a sweet and affectionate thing, as she thought that, perhaps, this would grow into passion. ( It did, but the angry remained tucked behind your ribs, messily entangled with your passion. ) 

What an angry little thing. Your first teacher said the first day of school. Another student called you a boy. It was not malicious, and at the time, you did not yet know why that word applied to you left your emotions a mangled mess of anger and pain and despair. Nonetheless, you lunged at the boy. It was written off as the result of too much energy. 

What an angry little thing. Your mother said the day you yelled and yelled. Now, you were a preteen at the time, and you felt wrong and wrong and wrong. All you knew, you wanted to do something to stop the feelings that paralyzed you. You needed her to do something, to stop it, to help you. 

What an angry little thing. Your father said when you first put a pin on your bag. Newly sixteen, newly legally named Morrigan, and newly moved into an apartment in Dublin with your family, you had no qualms about putting a transgender pin on your book bag the first day at your new school. We already moved all this way. He said. You really got to flaunt it here too? And you cannot remember anything other than the anger and the tears as you spat insults his way as you stormed out of the apartment. 

What an angry little thing. You said as you cleaned up a cut. It was a long and thin angry red line above your brow. A protest gone wrong, really. An act of rebellion gone wrong, really. Gone wrong when a counter protester got too bold and you got caught in the crossfire. ( Of course, you had been in quite a few fights before then, your angry always likely to propel you into a clash of fists. )

What an angry little thing. Your first girlfriend said after she dumped you. The relationship had been a long one, at least to the standards of two high school seniors. Days before graduation, while you voiced your angry about your father, about the kids in you class that didn’t understand you, about politicians that cared more about staying in power than people staying alive, watched you, took in your righteous anger and your over-exaggerated hand motions. She narrowed her eyes, something akin to annoyance crossing her face. I don’t see why any of this fucking matters. She interrupted. Can’t you just let this dumb shit go? Minutes later, you stormed out of her house, swallowing rage and wiping away your tears.

What an angry little thing. Your mother said after you packed your bags and stormed out of the house. You loved her, you really did. While you father wanted to ignore you, pretend that you were not different in a way he could not reconcile with the image of the world and the image of you he held, she offered you love and support and helped you get what you needed to live as the person you were. Except, maybe she never understood you, never understood the angry that beat in tune with your heart, and maybe she never would. He’s trying his best, Mor, can you try to see things how he does? ( Three time’s a pattern, you thought as you threw your bags into the cab, wiped the tears away, and tasted iron. )

Your anger is a good thing. A pretty girl said against your lips. And maybe that was the only the second time someone had praised your angry and the first time that you could remember. It’s fucking hot. It wasn’t the validation you craved, exactly, but it was enough for you that first year of college. You kissed her and you kissed her and you convinced yourself that you were in love with her not because she thought your anger, something that pushed you away and away and away from most everyone else, was something to be admired, something hot. 

Your anger is a good thing. A college professor told you after a lecture about declining ecosystems. Animals and plants and microorganisms were dying off. They were not dying to put food on the table, they were dying because of the avarice and carelessness of humans. When called on, you could not bite your tongue, could not stop the spiel about the injustice of it, the horror of it, and the ways the world was being ruined. Another pin, one calling for more environmental protections, was added to the collection of pins that adorned your bag. 

Your anger is a good thing. You thought as you packed up your bags, leaving to studying the wildlife on a Greek Island over the summer. A professor had suggested it, handed you a pamphlet for the aboard program for a summer research program for undergrads and a fall semester spent there hosted by your university. You applied nearly as soon as you got back to your dorm, and when you found out you got into the program, your excitement was nearly palpable. You would be helping out with research that might change the world, might help save a burning planet, and you could not imagine a better summer. 

Your anger is a good thing. You reminded yourself as idyllic life on Kaos made you consider staying. It lulled your anger into a dull thing, sometimes, on the days you had off from the research program. The beaches and the green and the sleepy smiles of the native residents of the Island, it left you with lowered blood pressure, and you wanted, perhaps selfishly, to never leave the beautiful beaches and the quaint village. Of course, of course, you forced yourself to remember the flaws of your world, the animals elsewhere that were dying for no purpose, and the people that were dying because of hate alone, and you knew, deep down, that you could not stay there for the rest of your life.

PERSONALITY EXPANSION 

adventurous→ Deep within your heart, there has always been a want, the all-consuming and clawing kind, to find excitement wherever and whenever you went.

fervent→ Your passion is a sort of undying thing. Once you set your mind to something, you are unshakeable in you convictions, and, with words or your fists, you will fight for what you believe with a fiery passion.

loyal→ While you are not the most friendly person, once you begin to care about someone, it’s almost impossible to chip away at the affection you feel for them.

protective→ Perhaps it is only natural to want to see those you care about out of harm’s way but, with you, it is an all-consuming thing, something that keeps you up with worry and forces your hand when someone you care about has been hurt.

aloof→ There is a distance between you and most people, a need to keep you heart safe from the many ways that people have hurt you before. To you, it is basic cost-benefit analysis that led to your decision to keep people at arm’s length rather than something more akin to fear.

argumentative→ Biting your tongue has not been your strong suit since you left the halls of your second-level school. University has thought the value of your words, even as you voice raises and blood pressure spikes, especially when your voice raises and blood pressure spikes.

irascible→ Burning alongside your passion is anger that you cannot ever seem to tame. Perhaps it is you anger, the way an injustice causes you blood to boil, the ache in your fists when men get a bit too creepy with a woman, the metallic taste as you bit you tongue in your youth, that fuels your passion.

resentful→ A bitterness runs through your veins, coloring the world a grey-tinted red, only made worse by the ways the world and basic human decency seems to crumble all around you.

TLDR  (TRANSPHOBIA TW, VIOLENCE TW, DYSPHORIA TW)

Morrigan Driscoll was born in Galway, Ireland on July 1st, 1999. She spent most of her life in Galway, growing up there and going to school there until she was sixteen.

Her deadname is not important, so unimportant that I didn’t bother to think one up so please don’t ask about it. 

Mora was always an angry child, prone to fighting and arguing with just about anyone she ran into. While her early fights were centered a lot about how she fight a disconnect between how she felt and her assigned gender, later it was also about how people were treated in society. 

When she was fourteen, she came out to her mother as trans and began to transition, even if Irish law wouldn’t have let her legally change her gender identity. While her mom was entirely supportive, her dad was less so, not ever really understanding why she needed a big deal out of this gender stuff. 

In 2015, a month after the end of the school year, Mora and her family moved to Dublin to avoid the stigma that she had been facing in Galway at her school since she started to transition. This was something that her dad held over her, acting like it was just more proof that she was being ridiculous about the entire thing. 

This was also the year she legally changed her name and gender since Ireland passed legislation that year. 

As supportive as her mom was, she never really challenged Mora’s father’s ideas and how he talked to Mora, so that led to a pretty strained relationship with both of her parents until she moved out for college. She doesn’t really talk to her dad much anymore but she does talk to her mom from time to time. She’s not really a part of Mora’s life but Mora’s not exactly that torn up about that. 

She goes to Trinity College, getting a degree in biology, and summer research and fall semester hosted by the school brought her to Kaos three weeks ago. 

While she’s on the island, she’s staying with Jonas !

She’s always been the activist type, going to protests and advocating for the causes she took up. Trans issues, women’s issues, and environmental issues are particular important to her but she does what she can for most causes she supports.

And similarly, she has always been a fiercely protective person of people who she think need, and those she is close to. 

Her anger is still very much a thing getting her in trouble. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS

I want all the connections but I have a page with a few ideas that you can find here !!

[lastsonlost]

And this is from Buzzfeed. Not Fox. Not Breitbart.

She’s The Public Face Of #MeToo In Science. Now Critics Are Speaking Out About Her Tactics.

Seven leaders of the MeTooSTEM group have resigned, citing a lack of transparency and the founder’s combative tweets.

An outspoken campaigner against sexual harassment in science is facing a crisis of leadership at MeTooSTEM, the volunteer organization she founded last year to support victims and hold perpetrators and institutions accountable.

Since November, seven members of the leadership team have resigned, citing concerns about the behavior of its founder, BethAnn McLaughlin, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

In their resignation letters, former MeTooSTEM leaders said that McLaughlin kept them in the dark about key decisions and reacted with hostility when they asked about the small organization’s finances and legal structure. They also worried that McLaughlin had alienated allies through her combative tweets.

“There have been several instances where supporters of MeTooSTEM have been upset by the tenor of your tweets, up to and including blocking you or being blocked by you,” wrote Julie Libarkin, an environmental scientist at Michigan State University who has compiled a database of more than 770 academic sexual misconduct cases, and Tisha Bohr, a biology postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, in their resignation email sent in November.

“Some of them, victims themselves, have reached out to us for clarification and support ... putting us in an impossible position of trying to support victims as well as you and the movement,” the message continued.

The most recent three departures, on April 24, included the only two women of color on the MeTooSTEM leadership team. “We … felt that white leadership input was prioritized over our own,” wrote Deanna Arsala, a biology graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Vidhya Sivakumaran, a former biophysicist who now works for a health informatics company.

MeTooSTEM was formed after a string of sexual harassmentscandals involving leading scientists, amid growing recognition that sexual and gender harassment is a pervasive problem in science. The rifts within the organization come against the backdrop of a debate about how best to tackle these problems, as McLaughlin’s burn-it-all-down zeal clashes with efforts by some activists to work with the academic establishment to achieve reform.

“I am aware that BethAnn is a polarizing person. Much of her effectiveness has been in bringing truth to power and being in your face,” said Carol Greider, a Nobel Prize–winning molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University, who earlier this month agreed to serve on MeTooSTEM’s board. “And sometimes those approaches do undermine the effectiveness.”

McLaughlin declined multiple requests for comment.

Leaders who have stayed with the organization defended McLaughlin’s activism, much of which is not in public view, they said.

“In my experience, all ideas were welcome and supported,” Britteny Watson, MeTooSTEM’s business manager, told BuzzFeed News by email.

“On the whole, I have personally had positive experiences with BethAnn and MeTooSTEM. I have seen her consistently go above and beyond for survivors, especially for transgender people of color and people who are dealing with issues related to immigration,” said Johanna Folk, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.

Folk added, however, that she can’t speak for anyone else. “My overall positive experience does not negate the concerns of others. All the people who left MeTooSTEM are ones I really look up to and value both personally and professionally. I am grateful for all of their work."

MeTooSTEM is not the first grassroots activist organization to face growing pains: Occupy Wall Street was riven by infightingamong its founders; the Women’s March was accused of anti-Semitism; Black Lives Matter has wrestled with debates over its future direction; and the March for Science, formed to protest the Trump administration’s science policies, added women of color to its leadership in 2017 after complaints that it was neglecting the concerns of minority groups.

McLaughlin is a particular lightning rod within the #MeToo movement in science because she has become its public face amid concerns that her combative approach may sometimes do more harm than good.

“There is a distinction between trying to speak truth to power and just bringing heat.”

“There is a distinction between trying to speak truth to power and just bringing heat,” said Kate Clancy, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana and an longtime advocate of women facing sexual harassment in science, who reached out to former volunteers after seeing their resignation tweets.

“What I’m hearing and seeing is heat being brought to women of color, heat being brought to grad students, and heat being brought to victims of sexual harassment,” Clancy said.

McLaughlin’s public activism grew from turmoil in her own career at Vanderbilt. Her application for tenure was put on hold after another Vanderbilt neuroscientist, Aurelio Galli, accused her of sending abusive tweets about him and other colleagues from multiuser accounts.

Galli had already been accused of sexual harassment by a former PhD student, who in July 2014 sued him and the university. McLaughlin later testified in support of a research collaborator from the University of Washington who in January 2015 alleged that Galli said, during a dinner at his house, that he would spend “every last penny” to make sure the person who accused him was ruined. (Vanderbilt settled the lawsuit brought by the PhD student in December 2014, and the judge dismissed her case against Galli.)

McLaughlin’s tenure application eventually restarted in 2017, but a faculty committee voted against her. She filed a grievance, which was rejected in February. (Galli has left Vanderbilt for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and filed his own lawsuit against McLaughlin for defamation in October 2018.)

McLaughlin rose to public prominence in May 2018, when she launched a petition asking the National Academy of Sciences remove members who had been sanctioned for sexual harassment. She followed up with a similar demand to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and later pressured the National Institutes of Health, the main federal funding agency for biomedical research, to stop giving grants to harassers and to exclude them from committees that help decide which scientists should get funded.

Through her acerbic Twitter account @McLNeuro, McLaughlin railed against “harassholes” and sparredwith scientific leaders including NAS President Marcia McNutt. In June 2018, she founded MeTooSTEM, initially as a website for women in science to tell their own stories about harassment.

She got results. In June 2018, the website RateMyProfessors.com dropped its “chili pepper” rating of professors’ “hotness” after a McLaughlin tweet criticizing the feature as “obnoxious and utterly irrelevant” was widely shared. In September, the AAAS announced a procedure to remove elected fellows involved in cases of sexual or gender harassment. And in February this year, NIH Director Francis Collins and other agency leaders cited McLaughlin’s activism in a statement that apologized for a failure to “address the climate and culture that has caused such harm” and promised: “We can do better. We must do better.”

Praise for McLaughlin culminated in November 2018 with the $250,000 MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award, which she shared with Tarana Burke, the civil rights activist who founded the #MeToo movement, and Sherry Marts, who has worked with scientific organizations and other nonprofits to make their events more inclusive.

But by that time, volunteers who had joined MeTooSTEM were starting to leave the organization.

First to depart, on Nov. 9, were the two scientists behind the @9replyguys Twitter account, launched to highlight the trolling and unhelpful comments that women often experience on social media. Scott Barolo, a cell biologist at the University of Michigan, said that he and the anonymous @shrewshrew, the account’s other author, were worried about a lack of transparency over the direction, structure, and finances of the organization.

“@shrewshrew and I became concerned that we were publicly associated with a fundraising organization that we didn’t understand and couldn’t get any information about,” Barolo told BuzzFeed News by email.

They were followed later that month by Bohr and Libarkin. “I left because I felt like attempts to organize structure and incorporate inclusive language were dismissed or ignored, that credit wasn't being properly allocated, and that differing opinions were often met with hostility both privately and publicly,” Bohr told BuzzFeed News.

“The things which people want (bylaws, structure, hierarchy, communication) are all critical,” McLaughlin replied to Bohr and Libarkin’s resignation email. “But those things do not have to happen now.”

Other leaders said that they pressed McLaughlin to give them designated roles. “When we tried to make long-term plans, BethAnn wasn’t really interested,” Erica Smith, a physics postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University Bloomington, who resigned in April, told BuzzFeed News. “We had a leadership team in name, but not really in practice.”

Smith, Arsala, and Sivakumaran left after a tense exchange of messages with McLaughlin after they asked questions about MeTooSTEM’s nonprofit status and finances, boosted by a GoFundMe launched in October 2018. The campaign has so far raised more than $78,000 toward a $200,000 goal. The money, according to the donation page, will be used to file for status as a tax-exempt nonprofit and to provide legal help for victims of harassment.

McLaughlin has also clashed on Twitter with activists who have disagreed with her. In August 2018, Anna Waymack, a humanities graduate student at Cornell University, responded to a McLaughlin tweet that told victims of campus sexual assault: “Title IX is broken. Go the the police.”

After Waymack argued that survivors should make their own choices, and pointed out that some have been further traumatized by the criminal justice system, McLaughlin cut her short with a one-word tweet: “Bye.”

“Being blown off like that was personally upsetting but also concerning because it replicates what the academy already does with that sort of dismissiveness,” Waymack told BuzzFeed News.

Last month, McLaughlin tweeted angrily at Hontas Farmer, a transgender woman of color who teaches physics at the City Colleges of Chicago. In a thread about student–faculty relationships, Farmer noted that it would be “unenforceable to forbid relationships.”

“Get off my time line with your pro-preying on students garbage,” McLaughlin responded. “Grown ups are talking. #STEMTrollAlert.”

That hashtag had previously been used to encourage allies to defend women scientists being trolled on Twitter. In response to its use against Farmer, one Twitter user tweeted an image of Jimmy Fallon in a wig. (The user later deleted the tweet, and apologized to Farmer.)

Farmer told BuzzFeed News that she has experienced worse attacks online, and she has continued to retweet McLaughlin after the incident. “I’ve dealt with people like BethAnn before. They’re very driven by what they believe and that sometimes makes them do wrong things,” she said.

McLaughlin’s strongly held beliefs extend to the current debate about how best to reduce sexual harassment in academia. Speaking at a meeting at the NIH on May 16, she condemned an effort launched in April called the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education, led by the National Academies and involving more than 40 colleges, universities, and research institutions.

“Every single one of them takes this Action Collaborative as a gold ribbon that they have done something right,” McLaughlin said. “They have all done something terribly, terribly wrong, and they have the wrong people at the table.”

That position has put her at odds with advocates including Clancy and Greider, who argue that reform should involve leading institutions. “I disagree with BethAnn about that,” Greider said. “We can have disagreements about approaches and still go forward.”

The volunteers who have left MeTooSTEM said that they are still committed to its wider goals of supporting victims of sexual harassment. “I believe that STEM would greatly benefit from having an organization, or more than one, with the goals of fighting sexual harassment and discrimination,” Barolo said.

“My hope is that we can learn from this experience to make a stronger and more inclusive community intent on battling harassment,” Bohr said.

[fluidityandgiggles]

Sleep Is For The Weak - Chapter 2

Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1

Notes (I guess): I am equally in love and in deep hate with some (a lot) of what’s going on in here, and I am terribly, terribly sorry. And also there are some characters I wanted to explore a bit further than what had been in this part, but... I’m working on it. Give it a bit and I’ll get there. Again, credit to @broadwaytheanimatedseries for screaming at me to write this, and to @whatwashernameagain for Keep Him Safe, and also a tiny tiny lil bit to @anony-phangirl and @asleepybisexual for their general support and for being such great sports about me annoying them with my ideas... (oops).

(I’m trying to find a way to write my notes, so bear with me until I find a way to… it might take a hot minute.)

(KHS) Tag List (sort of): @em-be-lievable, @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2, @adoratato, @supremestoverlord, @royallyanxious, @madly-handsome, @hanramz-the-fander, @the-incedible-sulk, @poisonedapples, @virge-of-a-breakdown, @winglessnymph, @princeanxious, @smokeyrutilequartz, @im-bad-at-life (if any of you could tag the rest, please do! I’m improving my memory from day to day, but… yeah…)

Tag list: @bunny222, @ab-artist, @secretlyanxiouspersona

Trigger warning: period appropriate transphobia (the early 00s were not exactly trans-friendly). This chapter in particular includes some very heavy misgendering and deadnaming (if you get what I’m saying). Please be careful.

—————

Science of Living Systems 20 actually wasn't as bad as Remy thought it would be. It was rather cool, actually.

Well, at least he hoped it was.

The head of the department was… an interesting individual. Remy met with him during the application process. The man insisted on calling him "Miss Harris" and speaking to and about him in girl pronouns, and Remy understood why.

For some reason, though, Remy expected all the professors to be like that. And not such was the case.

"Rebecca Harris, I want to see you later in my office."

Doctor Gilliam was in his late thirties, called everyone by their first and last names, thought that being single was hilarious, made really bad puns in his lectures (though Remy heard, not as much outside of them), and tried his best to be "hip with the kids". It was worrying, to say the least. And… yeah, Remy was slightly terrified.

"I'm kind of worried, kid," Gilliam said the moment Remy walked in. "You don't look too-"

"Excuse me, Doctor, but I don't know what this is about."

"Have you heard about shadows and personae, Rebecca Harris?" Remy shook his head, terrified to say a word. "Well, it's quite an interesting concept. According to Carl Jung, you'll learn about him later, the persona is the mask you wear in the world. It's what you want others to see. The shadow is your innermost self, the parts of your identity that you wish to hide from others."

"Okay, and?"

"I think your persona might be cracking."

What… was going on?

"I'm not making sense, am I? I'm sorry. There's a lot that goes into that theory and I shouldn't confuse you this much, at least not until we get to it."

Yeah… it was weird.

"So, my point is… you can talk to me if anything is making you uncomfortable, okay?"

"Okay… I guess."

"Well, that is all," Doctor Gilliam said, fixing his glasses.

That… was weird. But okay. If that's how he wants to do things. Remy wasn't going to complain.

He was definitely better than the head of department.

—

There was a knock at the door.

Abby, their RA, was over earlier. Apparently Katherine had a bit of a scene right after class. So naturally, Remy assumed it would be Abby. No one else could be knowing on their door at ten thirty pm-

"We don't have your bunny this time. You can go."

Oh.

"Oh, no, I just…" Remy could hear that… kid? Whatever his name was, from the door. "I just need… I need someone to help me with something. And…"

"Oh. Remy can help."

"No I can't," Remy replied. "I need sleep and so do you!"

"It won't take long, I promise!"

"...fine." Remy got off the couch - the nice, comfy couch, where there was a blanket and his sols20 book - to the door. Where that kid (Emile? Emile) was looking at him with those big blue eyes and…

Yeah, Remy regretted unbinding. (Well, no. He did not. But also kind of did.)

"Hey… Rebecca, right—"

"His name is Remy."

Emile seemed shocked for a moment. Oh shit. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't know. I just… I see you in most of my classes, so… never mind. So… how are you with baking?"

—

"So my sister Julie is LaVeyan—"

"Aren't we supposed to be baking cookies, babe?"

"Yeah, but… the stuff's all in the cabinets and I'm looking!"

Emile was a disaster child, Remy decided after only five minutes alone together. He brought a violin and his bunny to the kitchen in the pursuit of baking cookies - like, what even? - and he just seemed so… energetic? Happy? Whatever the word was. A couple minutes ago he was talking about the cookies, sure, but then he switched it to the importance of guided imagery, and then why Li Shang from Mulan is bisexual, and now… what was he even talking about?

"So my sister is a LaVeyan Satanist," Emile repeated himself, almost climbing on the counter to reach a cabinet. "It's kinda funny, actually. My dad's side of the family are all Catholic, and— can you put the sugar on the countertop, please? Thank you!"

"Sweetie, for the eleventh time this past ten minutes, I understand nothing you're saying."

"Am I speaking another language or something? Because if so I'm sorry!"

"No, it's just…" How does he not hurt his feelings? "It's just… you talk fast and about a lot of subjects at the same time."

"Oh. Okay. Sorry."

Maybe he thought Remy couldn't hear, but there was definitely a "this is just one of the things that are wrong about me" thrown in the air.

Emile didn't speak to him for the rest of the process. Maybe once or twice he pointed out a step or an ingredient, but overall he did not speak. At all. And then the cookies were in the oven…

And then he pulled out his violin.

"Is this really necessary?"

"I'm not talking to you."

"Emile, is it because of something I said?" Emile, still pouting (as he had been for a good hour and some now), nodded. "Well, I'm sorry. Please don't silent treatment me."

"I talk too fast and too much."

"Not what I said. I just said I can't follow you. I didn't say it's your fault. Please don't—"

Emile pretty much just ignored Remy (uhh, rude!) and positioned his violin, and started to play something… quite angrily.

After a minute and a half Remy recognized it as Once Upon a Dream from Sleeping Beauty.

After another three minutes, he dared open his mouth again. "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean to. Do you accept my apology?"

"...fine."

It was not fine. Absolutely not.

"Thanks for the help with the cookies," he said as they separated at the top of the stairs, all one-hundred-and-ninety cookies (Emile insisted on quadrupling the recipe) safely packed in plastic boxes and hidden away. "I… I'm gonna go now."

"Emile, please." He turned around, still looking quite pissed. (It was probably the hour, Remy tried telling himself. It's already past one am. This is not good.) "Are you mad that I said I'm confused?"

"To be honest with you, yes! Yes, I'm mad. I know it wasn't your intention but I heard you say shut the fuck up when you said that. And it hurt. Very badly."

...oh.

"I'm going to forgive you, but it's going to take me a bit, so please don't be mad at me, okay?" Emile honestly looked close to tears. "Good night, Remy. I'll see you in living systems tomorrow."

And then he went to his suite, violin and bunny with him.

Remy just got himself into a huge mess.

—

It was a beautiful afternoon in Boston when Remy found himself at the rather posh Italian place his mom wanted to meet at.

Before their divorce in late 1999, just after Remy turned fifteen, his father started contacting a charity organization dedicated to help transgender youth. He educated himself. Tried to educate his wife as well. But… apparently it was the last straw for Linda. The very night he tried to even just explain that it's not her fault, that it's how he was born, she packed up her things and left.

The divorce papers came in less than two months later. The divorce was finalized in November 1999. Remy did not see her since.

(Yeah… that was a lie. He actually hasn't seen her since Christmas 2001. But that was still a very long time. Almost a year is a long time.)

"Well, at least the weather's nice." And there she was with her new boy toy. Glamorous as ever, with her stupidly huge sunglasses and her bright red (disgustingly fake, makes India's hair seem real) curly bob, looking exactly the same as she did that day Remy came out to her.

A few hours later, though. When she thought he was asleep and left the house to go to some party.

"Well, at least you're still not very nice, Linda," he said with a smirk as he sat down next to her boy toy (he actually looks kinda nice, for a forty-something year old). "But much unlike the weather, I don't think this is a thing that can change so easily."

"Where are your manners, Rebecca?"

"The same place those diamond earrings you forgot when you left us are. At home with Dad, probably watching South Park."

"Well, at least we left the girls at home." Linda took off her sunglasses and replaced them with a normal, frameless pair of glasses. "I don't believe you met Stephen before, Rebecca."

"I don't believe I've met a Rebecca before, Linda."

"Are you ready to order?"

It took about two minutes for all the orders to place (of course Stephen had to order something overly fancy, because why the fuck not) before she started yapping again.

"Rebecca, I didn't ask to see you for you to be so rude to me."

"I didn't ask to see you, period."

"What would you like to be called, then?" Stephen asked. Well…

"Remy. My name is Remy."

"Your name is—"

"My name is not Rebecca! I haven't gone by that name since I was fourteen. Dad never called me that since the day I asked him to call me Remy. You're the only one who ever insisted, how do you think it made me feel?"

"How do you think it made me feel, Rebecca?" Remy hoped no one was looking. "My own daughter. I jeopardized my own high school graduation to have you because your father was dumb enough to forget the condoms. I gave up life-long dreams just to raise you, because that retard of a father you have couldn't. Is this how you repay me?"

There was a very awkward silence, that was broken by an unfamiliar voice - deep, with a southern drawl - and a confused "Rebecca?"

India. Without her makeup, her hair pulled back.

Looking almost perfectly manly.

"Excuse me?" Linda straightened her glasses, glaring at India. Oh, how Remy did not want this to happen… "And you are?"

"Ian McGinty, ma'am. I'm her boyfriend."

Oh.

"Your father didn't tell me you have a boyfriend," Linda spoke slowly.

"Because he doesn't know everything. And my name is still Remy."

"Ethan and I are gonna go now," India said, her voice still lower, still more southern than normal. "Text me when you're done, we'll go get ice cream?"

"...sure."

And then she leaned down and said, in the voice Remy grew to know and absolutely adore, "we're going to talk about this. Don't worry, I got your back."

And then she was gone.

"So a boyfriend, huh?"

"...so how many men have you fucked before meeting Stephen, Linda?"

—

"I'm so sorry about your mom, baby."

India's brother, Ethan, looked nothing like her. Well, he looked like a more manly, less boyish version of ‘manly' India, but also nothing alike. He also didn't talk much. So that was fun.

India took them to get ice cream indeed. (And much like her music taste, her favorite ice cream flavors - burnt caramel and earl grey - were rather… interesting. But she did swear that Toscanini's was probably the best ice cream in Cambridge, and who was Remy to argue with her?)

"It's alright. She's always been like this."

"Doesn't make it alright." Ethan grunted in agreement. "Take it from me, Remy. It's never alright."

"Does he have an Esther?"

India's eyes rolled so far back. "Do you think that every trans person have to have an Esther, Ethan? Do you truly think it's how we realize our identity?"

"It's how you did yours."

"I knew I'm a girl since the moment I understood who I am. Any related accidents after that are purely incidental."

"India, I think I fucked up." She looked up at him from her half-melted ice cream cup. "I told you about Emile, right?"

"You're still stuck on that?" Remy nodded. "Look… that kid told you he forgives you. You saw him in class since then, he didn't say anything to you… you're doing fine, sweetie."

"Is that his real boyfriend?"

"Ethan, shut the fuck up or I'll call mom. Remy…" India turned to play with his hair.

Yeah, it was very calming.

"He sounds like a very sweet kid. Trust me, there's no way you fucked anything up. You'll be okay. You'll get to hang out with him again, and it will be okay. Now eat your ice cream, you have the best ice cream, and then we're going back to your dorm and we're going to watch Priscilla. Or Hedwig. Whatever suits your fancy, okay?"

"...okay."

"Now, let's talk more about your mom and why it isn't okay that she treats you like that."

And for a bit, everything just seemed alright. Well, almost.

[re-pave]

The Physics of Forbidden Love

“You can blame it all on Percocet.

I was three days post-hysterectomy and a little loopy on painkillers. After five years of weekly testosterone injections, the canal (I can’t stand calling it a vagina, much less referring to it as “my”) had atrophied to near nonexistence. This made surgery difficult; I tore. The pain was bad enough. The fact that it was in an area of my body I had tried to ignore made me feel even worse. I had been treating the ache with Percocet, at the cost of my lucidity. 

In a minor delirium, I developed a sudden need to tell a charismatic acquaintance — a girl from India in my physics class — just how beautiful and funny she was. It was winter break, and I was at home in Wisconsin, while she had remained in San Antonio, where we went to school. So I decided to send her a quick message. I ended up writing her a rambling letter. 

“Hey,” I began, “you have cow eyes. I know that sounds like a bad thing but have you ever looked into a cow’s eyes? They are so deep and brown and beautiful. I’ve looked into a lot a cow eyes because I’m from Wisconsin.” After ruminating for another paragraph about cows and eyes, I wrote about how, when I squinted at the back of her head during physics, it looked as though the kinematic equations on the whiteboard were growing out of her hair. Finally, mercifully, I concluded by asking if she wanted to get together after the break.

The next day, looking for her response, I found my letter as a new email in my own inbox. In my stupor, I had sent it not to her but to myself. I didn’t try to resend it. But when I saw her back at school, I couldn’t resist telling the story of my misdirected, narcotics-fueled message. She laughed, then asked what surgery I’d had to get me on painkillers.

“That’s top secret,” I said. “You need security clearance. I’m going to need fingerprint scans, and your phone number.” She gave me her number. But I didn’t give her security clearance. No one at school knew I was transgender. I had transitioned at 15 and arrived at college with no intention of discussing my unusual childhood with my peers. So far I had managed all right, but now, that intention was on a collision course with my dating prospects. The more she and I flirted, the more I realized how unprepared I was to explain my history. Should I tell her bluntly or start from the beginning? What if she was angry, or told the whole school? Listening to a friend boast of a recent hookup, I felt a bitter envy; how simple it must be to have a body that makes sense, that needs no explanation.

After a few dates, I sat her down in the ornithology lab where I worked and tried to explain. Since she is pre-med, like me, I figured the simplest explanation was the medical one; how at the start of high school, after years of feeling like a boy trapped in a girl’s skin, I was told by my doctor that I had gender dysphoria, the product of a mismatch between body and brain. Although I tried to maintain a confident tone, I grew flushed and hot before I even managed to say the word “transgender,” and my voice grew so quiet that her growling stomach nearly drowned me out. When I was finished she sat very still, the only sound a whirring centrifuge, in the other room. I waited for her to get up and leave. She didn’t. 

Taking my hand, she said, “I had no idea.” 

In the flood of relief, I also felt a twinge of irritation. Of course she had no idea. I’m almost six feet tall, with a full beard and an Adam’s apple that had once poked a girlfriend in the eye. What would have tipped her off?

“I don’t really care, I think,” she continued. 

“Just tell me if I say something stupid, O.K.? I don’t know a lot about it. I don’t know anything, actually.”

For the next week, everything was fine. I was her first kiss. She fed me my first tikhi puri. Then one night, as we sat in her car, I learned that the biggest impediment to our relationship wasn’t that I was a boy with two X chromosomes, but something much more commonplace: my heritage. Her parents, who had immigrated to Texas from India when she was 5, feared that their culture would be diluted and lost in America, so she was forbidden from dating anyone who was not Indian. With my Midwest accent, ratty Packers sweater and frozen-tilapia complexion, I was the antithesis of the son-in-law they hoped for. She hadn’t told them about me and didn’t know if she ever would. A more painful breakup later on seemed inevitable, so we agreed to stop seeing each other. 

I hoped that the rationality of the decision would offer comfort. It didn’t. Soon enough, though, we drifted back to sitting with each other in physics. There, during a demonstration of magnetism, our professor pulled apart two neodymium discs, only to see them slide back together when she laid them on the table. We watched, took notes and imitated. Within a week, she was back in my bed. It wasn’t a decision, it was physics. Opposites doing what opposites do. After the first few days, when all I could think was how stupid we were being, our relationship had evolved into a surprisingly functional one, though with a few limitations. I couldn’t post photos of us together online, or talk in the background while she spoke to her parents on the phone. Once she had to accessorize her temple apparel — a colorful, traditional kurti — with an oatmeal-like woolen scarf to cover the hickeys I had carelessly left the night before. We went on muck-collecting expeditions to find anaerobic bacteria for her microbiology class. I found a way onto the roof of the student center, where we would go to look at the stars. At first I made jokes about how doomed we were, but as we grew closer the jokes stopped being funny. She was truly unfazed by my transness. I exulted in this; it seemed as though I had finally cleared the last hurdle between me and the mundane heterosexual existence I had yearned for. Joking about reincarnation once, she said I must have had great karma to be a human in this life.

“It couldn’t have been that good,” I said, “or I wouldn’t have wound up in a girl’s body.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a girl’s body. It’s yours.”

As we lay together at night, listening to the possum living in my ceiling scuffle back and forth, we initiated each other into our opposite and alien existences. I told her about the ordeals of my middle-school years and the euphoria of my first testosterone shot, the suicides of friends, the post-transition balancing game pitting safety against loss of identity. 

And, feeling homesick, I told her about walking on frozen Lake Monona, and how the Wisconsin woods turn orange and then black and stay black for too long, until you think you’re going to die in the lonely cold before the ice ever melts. And how one day everything turns green, the trees and branches and trunks and even the boulders, too. She had never seen snow. I had never seen sugar cane fields. She told me about her grandparents’ blue house in Gujarat, where she had lived while her parents tried to ground themselves in Texas, and the terror of the plane ride to meet them; 5 years old and flying to America in a cabin full of strangers. She attended weekly services at the local Hindu temple and would do her best to explain what had been talked about that day, despite my total religious ignorance. My favorite faux pas: Telling her we should name the elephant figurine on her dashboard Elphy McTrunkface. It turned out he already had a name: Lord Ganesh. 

She and I are still together, and we will almost certainly break up. Our relationship is based on mutual respect and trust — like any healthy pairing — but also on denial. She cannot marry me. We both know this, though I think she knows it better than I do. The foolhardy logic I use to rationalize my commitment to her will no doubt worsen my inevitable heartbreak. But for now, it sustains me. As animosity toward brown-skinned immigrants seems to worsen daily in this political climate, and anti-transgender bills that strip me of my dignity draw closer to becoming law in the Texas Legislature, there are days when we wake up scared, go to bed scared and navigate our isolation in between. Why not find refuge, however finite and daring, with each other? In a time of such upheaval and uncertainty, our reckless, quiet love feels like deliverance.” 

Malcolm Conner

[rivalplatinum-blog]

Pocket Ethics: Why Ash Won’t Date

-This is a repost from my amino blog-

Hey Guys,

It's Valentines Day tomorrow and love is in the air. So, what better way to celebrate than ruining all of your hopes and dreams about love in the Pokémon Universe. Today, I'll be examining one timeless question from a bit of a different perspective... Why Ash never gets a girlfriend. No, Serena doesn't count Amour Shippers. There's a difference between a relationship and an implied kiss. I welcome you all to the first ever holiday episode of POCKET ETHICS

!WARNING! THIS BLOG CONTAINS OPINIONS. I WILL TRY TO BACK THESE OPINIONS UP WITH FACTS. HOWEVER, IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO THE THOUGHTS OR FEELINGS OF OTHERS TURN AROUND NOW. FOR THIS BLOG WE WILL ALSO BE FOCUSING ON THE MAIN SERIES AND NOT THE MOVIES. SO ANY ROMANCE WITH A CERTAIN LATIAS IS TO BE DISCOUNTED. This topic is one very near and dear to my heart. I am trans-male, so if you want to make hateful comments this is not the place to do it. I feel as though everyone should know about this stuff, though. Exposure is the best way to combat hate. What is Socialization? According to experts at Palomar College, "The general process of acquiring culture is referred to as socialization," In this process we're taught everything from how our gender should behave to what is right and wrong. This isn't an exaggeration. Did you ever steal something when you were a little kid, get scolded for it when you were found out, then were told to return the item. That is a common example of socialization in action. There are several agents of socialization. The main one, when you're young, is your family. Be that (a) parent(s), older siblings, or guardians. As we get older, generally schools take over the role of the main agent of socialization. A school would be an example of a social institution. However, friends also begin to contribute at that point. There are other social institutions (Such as the Military or a Gang), and other types of agents of socialization (Co-workers and Bosses are a good example). But, keep a tab on those two terms: Agents of Socialization and Social Institutions. We'll come back to them later.

Ash/Satoshi Ash, or 智 (Satoshi) in the Japanese anime, is the main protagonist of the Pokémon Anime. Over the years he has traveled through the regions with various companions, on a quest to become a Pokémon Master. And, frequently these companions are female. So, why hasn't he actually romanced any of them? The Easy argument is that he's a prepubescent ten year old in most of the seasons, so he wouldn't feel sexual attraction to any of themes. But kids CAN actually feel romantic attraction. So, even if a relationship didn't go anywhere explicit, he still could have been proclaiming his love (love, not lust) for any one of his companions. Puppy love baby. Instead, Ash is possibly not romantically inclined to be in a relationship.

Gender Identity It's important to mention this. Gender is defined by what a person identifies as. Male and Female are both sexes. Man and Woman are both genders, or more correctly Cis-Male and Cis-Female. We haven't seen a truly transgendered or agendered character in Pokémon. Unless Ilima is hiding something from us. It's pretty safe to assume Ash's gender. That he's Cis-Male. This is likely partially due to the fact that he was socialized as a male. Professors, Gym Leaders, Champions, and the Pokémon League are all either Agents of Socialization or Social Institutions. Though it seems like a fairly equal minded organization, again, do we see any trans Gym Leaders? Nope. And Ilima is a Trial Captain. Which means they technically work with the Kahunas. Even if they aren't transgender or gender fluid or even agendered, let's face it, Ilima isn't a stereotypical male.

Sexuality Okay. So, sexuality is BIOLOGICAL. This is the perfect example of an aspect of ones identity being created by nature over nurture (Which annoys most Sociologists to no end). There's nothing one can do to change if they are physically attracted to a man, woman, someone who is non-binary, all of the above, or no one at all. In an article from Psych-Central by Elissa Malcohn on Neuroscientist Simon LeVay's book, Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation, there is a brilliant quote, "Rather than ask, “What went wrong?” biological theories examine sexual variety as part of nature.  Homosexual behavior is common among nonhuman animals.  Graylag geese include male-male sexual pair bonds that can break up if females become available.  Male and female bonobos freely engage in both homosexual and heterosexual behavior.  Domesticated sheep include rams that refuse to mate with ewes, but that readily mate with other rams." These anecdotes both show that there is a spectrum of sexual orientations in nature. But, we can't say that Ash is homosexual (Though he might be asexual). He hasn't shown any sign of being attracted to Brock, Cillian, Clemont, or even the GLORIOUS Kiawe. And, isn't this piece about how Ash ISN'T attracted to women? The main sign we've seen of Ash liking a girl was in the last episode of XYZ where Ash is possibly kissed by Serena. And, Ash didn't initiate that action. It was Serena who did. So, he's likely not homosexual.

Romanticism Here's where the interesting part of the argument comes in to play. Ash is, likely, aromantic. For those of you unfamiliar with terms like this or Latin, the prefix "a" means "Not" or "Without". Aromantic means Not Romantic. Ash can be seen with two girls in particular who are shown to possibly (or actually) like him. Misty and Serena. These girls are in ways complete opposites. So you have a wide range of personalities for him to choose from. Serena made her interest in Ash fairly obvious, even if it was, at times, unintentional. Misty, on the other hand, acted more like a (please don't kill me for saying this) tsundere. She would slip a gushing line in occasionally, then act hot-tempered. Ash could have picked either of them. But, he didn't. In fact he was oblivious to most of their actions. So, he might be homoromantic? I doubt it. It's important to note that Ash hasn't made any romantic advances towards any male characters. Even if people do ship Ash and Sawyer. It's likely that we'll never know for sure, but I'm guessing that Ash would be aromantic. I hope you enjoyed this. See! I didn't ruin part of the franchise. Well... Unless you ship anyone with Ash. But it's still just an idea! Anyways, Happy Valentines Day! Peace Out, -Plat Sources Palomar College - http://anthro.palomar.edu/social/soc_1.htm Psych-Central - https://psychcentral.com/lib/gay-straight-and-the-reason-why-the-science-of-sexual-orientation/] Sociology in Modules

[biofunmy]

BethAnn McLaughlin Started #MeTooSTEM To Fight Harassment In Science. Now Critics Are Challenging Her Leadership.

An outspoken campaigner against sexual harassment in science is facing a crisis of leadership at MeTooSTEM, the volunteer organization she founded last year to support victims and hold perpetrators and institutions accountable.

Since November, seven members of the leadership team have resigned, citing concerns about the behavior of its founder, BethAnn McLaughlin, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

In their resignation letters, former MeTooSTEM leaders said that McLaughlin kept them in the dark about key decisions and reacted with hostility when they asked about the small organization’s finances and legal structure. They also worried that McLaughlin had alienated allies through her combative tweets.

“There have been several instances where supporters of MeTooSTEM have been upset by the tenor of your tweets, up to and including blocking you or being blocked by you,” wrote Julie Libarkin, an environmental scientist at Michigan State University who has compiled a database of more than 770 academic sexual misconduct cases, and Tisha Bohr, a biology postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, in their resignation email sent in November.

“Some of them, victims themselves, have reached out to us for clarification and support … putting us in an impossible position of trying to support victims as well as you and the movement,” the message continued.

The most recent three departures, on April 24, included the only two women of color on the MeTooSTEM leadership team. “We … felt that white leadership input was prioritized over our own,” wrote Deanna Arsala, a biology graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Vidhya Sivakumaran, a former biophysicist who now works for a health informatics company.

MeTooSTEM was formed after a string of sexual harassment scandals involving leading scientists, amid growing recognition that sexual and gender harassment is a pervasive problem in science. The rifts within the organization come against the backdrop of a debate about how best to tackle these problems, as McLaughlin’s burn-it-all-down zeal clashes with efforts by some activists to work with the academic establishment to achieve reform.

“I am aware that BethAnn is a polarizing person. Much of her effectiveness has been in bringing truth to power and being in your face,” said Carol Greider, a Nobel Prize–winning molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University, who earlier this month agreed to serve on MeTooSTEM’s board. “And sometimes those approaches do undermine the effectiveness.”

McLaughlin declined multiple requests for comment.

Leaders who have stayed with the organization defended McLaughlin’s activism, much of which is not in public view, they said.

“In my experience, all ideas were welcome and supported,” Britteny Watson, MeTooSTEM’s business manager, told BuzzFeed News by email.

“On the whole, I have personally had positive experiences with BethAnn and MeTooSTEM. I have seen her consistently go above and beyond for survivors, especially for transgender people of color and people who are dealing with issues related to immigration,” said Johanna Folk, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.

Folk added, however, that she can’t speak for anyone else. “My overall positive experience does not negate the concerns of others. All the people who left MeTooSTEM are ones I really look up to and value both personally and professionally. I am grateful for all of their work.”

MeTooSTEM is not the first grassroots activist organization to face growing pains: Occupy Wall Street was riven by infighting among its founders; the Women’s March was accused of anti-Semitism; Black Lives Matter has wrestled with debates over its future direction; and the March for Science, formed to protest the Trump administration’s science policies, added women of color to its leadership in 2017 after complaints that it was neglecting the concerns of minority groups.

McLaughlin is a particular lightning rod within the #MeToo movement in science because she has become its public face amid concerns that her combative approach may sometimes do more harm than good.

“There is a distinction between trying to speak truth to power and just bringing heat,” said Kate Clancy, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana and an longtime advocate of women facing sexual harassment in science, who reached out to former volunteers after seeing their resignation tweets.

“What I’m hearing and seeing is heat being brought to women of color, heat being brought to grad students, and heat being brought to victims of sexual harassment,” Clancy said.

McLaughlin’s public activism grew from turmoil in her own career at Vanderbilt. Her application for tenure was put on hold after another Vanderbilt neuroscientist, Aurelio Galli, accused her of sending abusive tweets about him and other colleagues from multiuser accounts.

Galli had already been accused of sexual harassment by a former PhD student, who in July 2014 sued him and the university. McLaughlin later testified in support of a research collaborator from the University of Washington who in January 2015 alleged that Galli said, during a dinner at his house, that he would spend “every last penny” to make sure the person who accused him was ruined. (Vanderbilt settled the lawsuit brought by the PhD student in December 2014, and the judge dismissed her case against Galli.)

McLaughlin’s tenure application eventually restarted in 2017, but a faculty committee voted against her. She filed a grievance, which was rejected in February. (Galli has left Vanderbilt for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and filed his own lawsuit against McLaughlin for defamation in October 2018.)

McLaughlin rose to public prominence in May 2018, when she launched a petition asking the National Academy of Sciences remove members who had been sanctioned for sexual harassment. She followed up with a similar demand to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and later pressured the National Institutes of Health, the main federal funding agency for biomedical research, to stop giving grants to harassers and to exclude them from committees that help decide which scientists should get funded.

Through her acerbic Twitter account @McLNeuro, McLaughlin railed against “harassholes” and sparred with scientific leaders including NAS President Marcia McNutt. In June 2018, she founded MeTooSTEM, initially as a website for women in science to tell their own stories about harassment.

She got results. In June 2018, the website RateMyProfessors.com dropped its “chili pepper” rating of professors’ “hotness” after a McLaughlin tweet criticizing the feature as “obnoxious and utterly irrelevant” was widely shared. In September, the AAAS announced a procedure to remove elected fellows involved in cases of sexual or gender harassment. And in February this year, NIH Director Francis Collins and other agency leaders cited McLaughlin’s activism in a statement that apologized for a failure to “address the climate and culture that has caused such harm” and promised: “We can do better. We must do better.”

Praise for McLaughlin culminated in November 2018 with the $250,000 MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award, which she shared with Tarana Burke, the civil rights activist who founded the #MeToo movement, and Sherry Marts, who has worked with scientific organizations and other nonprofits to make their events more inclusive.

But by that time, volunteers who had joined MeTooSTEM were starting to leave the organization.

First to depart, on Nov. 9, were the two scientists behind the @9replyguys Twitter account, launched to highlight the trolling and unhelpful comments that women often experience on social media. Scott Barolo, a cell biologist at the University of Michigan, said that he and the anonymous @shrewshrew, the account’s other author, were worried about a lack of transparency over the direction, structure, and finances of the organization.

“@shrewshrew and I became concerned that we were publicly associated with a fundraising organization that we didn’t understand and couldn’t get any information about,” Barolo told BuzzFeed News by email.

They were followed later that month by Bohr and Libarkin. “I left because I felt like attempts to organize structure and incorporate inclusive language were dismissed or ignored, that credit wasn’t being properly allocated, and that differing opinions were often met with hostility both privately and publicly,” Bohr told BuzzFeed News.

“The things which people want (bylaws, structure, hierarchy, communication) are all critical,” McLaughlin replied to Bohr and Libarkin’s resignation email. “But those things do not have to happen now.”

Other leaders said that they pressed McLaughlin to give them designated roles. “When we tried to make long-term plans, BethAnn wasn’t really interested,” Erica Smith, a physics postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University Bloomington, who resigned in April, told BuzzFeed News. “We had a leadership team in name, but not really in practice.”

Smith, Arsala, and Sivakumaran left after a tense exchange of messages with McLaughlin after they asked questions about MeTooSTEM’s nonprofit status and finances, boosted by a GoFundMe launched in October 2018. The campaign has so far raised more than $78,000 toward a $200,000 goal. The money, according to the donation page, will be used to file for status as a tax-exempt nonprofit and to provide legal help for victims of harassment.

McLaughlin has also clashed on Twitter with activists who have disagreed with her. In August 2018, Anna Waymack, a humanities graduate student at Cornell University, responded to a McLaughlin tweet that told victims of campus sexual assault: “Title IX is broken. Go the the police.”

After Waymack argued that survivors should make their own choices, and pointed out that some have been further traumatized by the criminal justice system, McLaughlin cut her short with a one-word tweet: “Bye.”

“Being blown off like that was personally upsetting but also concerning because it replicates what the academy already does with that sort of dismissiveness,” Waymack told BuzzFeed News.

Last month, McLaughlin tweeted angrily at Hontas Farmer, a transgender woman of color who teaches physics at the City Colleges of Chicago. In a thread about student–faculty relationships, Farmer noted that it would be “unenforceable to forbid relationships.”

“Get off my time line with your pro-preying on students garbage,” McLaughlin responded. “Grown ups are talking. #STEMTrollAlert.”

That hashtag had previously been used to encourage allies to defend women scientists being trolled on Twitter. In response to its use against Farmer, one Twitter user tweeted an image of Jimmy Fallon in a wig. (The user later deleted the tweet, and apologized to Farmer.)

Farmer told BuzzFeed News that she has experienced worse attacks online, and she has continued to retweet McLaughlin after the incident. “I’ve dealt with people like BethAnn before. They’re very driven by what they believe and that sometimes makes them do wrong things,” she said.

McLaughlin’s strongly held beliefs extend to the current debate about how best to reduce sexual harassment in academia. Speaking at a meeting at the NIH on May 16, she condemned an effort launched in April called the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education, led by the National Academies and involving more than 40 colleges, universities, and research institutions.

“Every single one of them takes this Action Collaborative as a gold ribbon that they have done something right,” McLaughlin said. “They have all done something terribly, terribly wrong, and they have the wrong people at the table.”

That position has put her at odds with advocates including Clancy and Greider, who argue that reform should involve leading institutions. “I disagree with BethAnn about that,” Greider said. “We can have disagreements about approaches and still go forward.”

The volunteers who have left MeTooSTEM said that they are still committed to its wider goals of supporting victims of sexual harassment. “I believe that STEM would greatly benefit from having an organization, or more than one, with the goals of fighting sexual harassment and discrimination,” Barolo said.

“My hope is that we can learn from this experience to make a stronger and more inclusive community intent on battling harassment,” Bohr said.

Sahred From Source link Science

from WordPress http://bit.ly/30YAdNh via IFTTT

[gyrlversion]

Author Christina Patterson reveals how she finally defeated adult acne

Relieved: Christina Patterson had been struggling with acne since she was 13

The doctor looked down at his notebook and sighed. ‘In that waiting room,’ he said, ‘I’ve got patients with real problems. What exactly do you want me to do?’

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. I cupped my fingers round my chin.

I couldn’t stop touching the deep, red, painful lumps there. Please, I wanted to yell, just make them go away.

When I saw that doctor I was feeling desperate. It was part of my job to go on a stage and present public events, but a few weeks before, my face had exploded with throbbing red bumps that developed into giant yellow pustules.

I plastered my face with foundation, but some of the pustules burst and encouraged new crops of yellow lumps, like mushrooms springing up after rain.

I was 34 and had been struggling with acne, on and off, since I was 13.

I first felt a sprinkling of tiny bumps on my forehead at the same time I started noticing boys. I was prescribed antibiotics and used all kinds of lotions, none of which worked, and even tried giving up chocolate, which didn’t make any difference at all.

Acne is embarrassing and upsetting as a teenager, knocking confidence at just the time you’re trying to summon some up. But it’s even worse when you’re an adult.

I was working in a bookshop as a 23-year-old when the scattering of normal spots on my face suddenly burst into a mass of red lumps that seemed to pulsate under my skin. I was referred to a dermatologist, who put me on Roaccutane, a drug that shrinks the oil glands, helping stop pores becoming clogged with oil and inflamed with bacteria.

 Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt sick. Acne was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night as I slathered ointments on my sore, weeping skin

It was meant to be a miracle drug, and I waited for that miracle to happen to me. Instead, almost every pore on my face seemed to turn into a red lump, which turned into a multi-headed pustule. Soon, there seemed to be more pustules than normal skin.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt sick. Acne was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night as I slathered ointments on my sore, weeping skin.

My doctor referred me to a specialist hospital for skin diseases, where I was blasted with ultra-violet light while standing in a metal box like an upright coffin.

It burnt off most of the spots, and quite a bit of the skin. For about a year, my face was much better, but then the spots came back. I tried more antibiotics. I tried homeopathy. I tried acupuncture. I tried Chinese herbs. I saw a nutritionist.

Many people think acne is a teenage problem that passes, but it isn’t. ‘Half the patients I see are adults,’ says Professor Tony Chu, a dermatologist and founder of the charity Acne and Rosacea Association UK.

‘I see patients in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. I had one patient who was 85 and fed up with being told she would grow out of it.’

There are, he explains, two major causes of acne: hormones and stress. ‘If you’re under stress,’ he says, ‘the adrenal glands start pumping out not just adrenaline and cortisol, but a lot more male hormones.’

It’s these hormones that cause the changes in oil production and the blockage in the pores.

A former acne patient himself, Professor Chu knows more than most about the distress it can cause. Many of the patients he sees have been put on antidepressants. Some are suicidal.

When my acne was at its worst, I came pretty near to it. Sometimes it felt like too much of a challenge to walk down the street.

Claire (not her real name), 54, knows what that feels like. We worked together years ago, and both felt huge relief when we opened up to each other about our lifetime of secret acne shame. Hers started the summer she was 14. ‘The boys in my class called me Pizza Face or Gangrene,’ she says. ‘Strangers would stare at me. I felt deformed.’

No wonder she spent most of her adolescence on antidepressants.

Christina Patterson is the author of The Art of Not Falling Apart

Like me, Claire was semi-permanently on antibiotics, which made little difference. Like me, she didn’t dare come off them, in case the acne got worse. In her 20s, she wouldn’t stay with friends because she didn’t want to be seen without her thick mask of makeup.

‘I always wanted to be an actor,’ she says. ‘But my self-worth was wrecked by acne.’ Claire didn’t feel better about her skin until she was 40, when she had a baby and her spots largely disappeared.

Duncan, 57, who contacted me after reading about my acne in my book, The Art Of Not Falling Apart, has also struggled with it for most of his adult life.

‘I drank a lot,’ he says. ‘I realise now I was self-medicating.

‘I wasn’t socialising. I was sitting in the house, while my friends went to the pub.’

Duncan wanted to be a quantity surveyor. He went for his interview on a hot summer’s day. ‘I had a jumper on top of a shirt because my back always bled, because of the acne,’ he says.

‘All the guys were wearing just shirts and I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t go into this.’ I ended up doing dead-end jobs for a while.’

When he was 28, he was put on Roaccutane and the acne cleared up. He still sometimes gets break-outs and has severe scarring.

Duncan works in mental health and enjoys his job, but has regrets about the things he missed out on. ‘There’s always that feeling that I didn’t do things that my pals were doing,’ he says.

For Professor Chu, these are familiar stories. He has spent his professional life trying to help people avoid this kind of pain, but is not a fan of Roaccutane.

Under the weather: The health concerns worsened by cold weather

This week: You’re prone to getting fat.

Getting fatter in the winter isn’t just about eating comfort food.

We have thousands of different bacteria in the gut, known collectively as the microbiome.

Each bacteria has a different job and a 2014 study found that, during winter, the balance shifts so we have higher levels of Firmicutes — bacteria that absorb calories.

Why this happens isn’t known, but ‘during winter your body wants to extract and store as much energy from food as possible’, said University of Chicago researcher Dr Emily Davenport.

However, we might also contribute to the change by swapping to a stodgier diet.

High levels of plant foods in the diet create a more diverse microbiome, ‘but if you’ve been eating three or four servings of fresh produce a day and that shrinks to one in winter, you may change the composition of your gut bacteria accordingly’, says Dr Davenport.

‘Fifty per cent of patients have a relapse,’ he says. ‘If they relapse after the first course, they’ll relapse after every course.’

He has, he says, had patients referred to him who have had 12 courses already. And the side-effects can be ‘dire’. Not just, he says, the depression and risk of suicide, but ‘acne fulminans, where your acne goes ballistic, in places you’ve never had it before’.

It’s thought this may be due to the presence of microcomedones, deep-seated blockages that can blow up into large pustules. This is what happened to me when I was prescribed Roaccutane.

What saved me, in the end, was a drug called Androcur. It blocks the effects of androgens — male hormones such as testosterone.

The drug, which I took as a daily pill, is also used as a hormone therapy for transgender patients undergoing transition treatment from female to male.

It gave me a migraine every month, but I was so desperate I put up with it and took it for three years. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, at 39, I had to come off it, but the acne never came back.

It’s 40 years since I first developed acne. So what, I ask Professor Chu, are the most exciting new treatments?

‘The trouble with acne,’ he says, ‘is that from the financial point of view, it’s not a high flier.’

Acne treatments are not considered worth the multi-million investments it takes to get a drug off the ground.

There are, he says, more developments in treating acne scarring than in the spots themselves. For the scarring, he uses an electric automatic needling machine that produces 100,000 tiny pinpricks a minute, which some studies have shown can cause a 600 per cent increase in collagen production.

‘It’s fantastic, but I prefer not to treat acne scarring. I prefer to prevent it,’ he says. So say all of us. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to treat my acne successfully, but I’m relieved I now just have my wrinkles to worry about.

The Art Of Not Falling Apart is now out in paperback (Atlantic, £8.99).

The post Author Christina Patterson reveals how she finally defeated adult acne appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[moonkissedisms]

If suddenly she rears pulls, pitches into the lightning

if the split sky strikes splinters the glassy ground (her stride is a circle growing smaller)

when she sees the stars —all skies have storms and she has seen them

if she shies and starts when she skids when she lowers her eyes if she stops to listen:

nervous rider, beware.

—anu lakhan  

APP

✧･ﾟ(   artemis + hunter schafer + trans woman   ) 𝒎𝒂𝒎𝒎𝒂 𝒎𝒊𝒂 !!  have you seen (   morrigan ‘mora’ driscoll  ) around ? (   she  ) has been in kaos for (  three weeks  ). the (  twenty year old  ) is a (   college student   ) from (   dublin, ireland   ). people say they can be (   vindictive   ) but maybe that’s not too bad ‘cause they can also be (   protective  ). whenever i think of them, i can’t help but think of (  jeans ripped in the woods, the scent of the forest, dirt smeared across hands   ).  ･ﾟ✧  (  penned by chris, 18, est, she/they  ).

STATS

name: Morrigan Driscoll

nickname: Mora

age: twenty

pronouns & gender: trans woman, she/her

sexuality: lesbian

birthday: july 1st

BIO (TRANSPHOBIA TW, VIOLENCE TW, DYSPHORIA TW)

What an angry little thing. Your mother said the day you were born. No matter how she held you, no matter how long she let you lay, no matter how much you ate, no matter how much she tried to soothe you, you screamed and screamed and screamed. She said it with a smile on her face, a sweet and affectionate thing, as she thought that, perhaps, this would grow into passion. ( It did, but the angry remained tucked behind your ribs, messily entangled with your passion. ) 

What an angry little thing. Your first teacher said the first day of school. Another student called you a boy. It was not malicious, and at the time, you did not yet know why that word applied to you left your emotions a mangled mess of anger and pain and despair. Nonetheless, you lunged at the boy. It was written off as the result of too much energy. 

What an angry little thing. Your mother said the day you yelled and yelled. Now, you were a preteen at the time, and you felt wrong and wrong and wrong. All you knew, you wanted to do something to stop the feelings that paralyzed you. You needed her to do something, to stop it, to help you. 

What an angry little thing. Your father said when you first put a pin on your bag. Newly sixteen, newly legally named Morrigan, and newly moved into an apartment in Dublin with your family, you had no qualms about putting a transgender pin on your book bag the first day at your new school. We already moved all this way. He said. You really got to flaunt it here too? And you cannot remember anything other than the anger and the tears as you spat insults his way as you stormed out of the apartment. 

What an angry little thing. You said as you cleaned up a cut. It was a long and thin angry red line above your brow. A protest gone wrong, really. An act of rebellion gone wrong, really. Gone wrong when a counter protester got too bold and you got caught in the crossfire. ( Of course, you had been in quite a few fights before then, your angry always likely to propel you into a clash of fists. )

What an angry little thing. Your first girlfriend said after she dumped you. The relationship had been a long one, at least to the standards of two high school seniors. Days before graduation, while you voiced your angry about your father, about the kids in you class that didn’t understand you, about politicians that cared more about staying in power than people staying alive, watched you, took in your righteous anger and your over-exaggerated hand motions. She narrowed her eyes, something akin to annoyance crossing her face. I don’t see why any of this fucking matters. She interrupted. Can’t you just let this dumb shit go? Minutes later, you stormed out of her house, swallowing rage and wiping away your tears.

What an angry little thing. Your mother said after you packed your bags and stormed out of the house. You loved her, you really did. While you father wanted to ignore you, pretend that you were not different in a way he could not reconcile with the image of the world and the image of you he held, she offered you love and support and helped you get what you needed to live as the person you were. Except, maybe she never understood you, never understood the angry that beat in tune with your heart, and maybe she never would. He’s trying his best, Mor, can you try to see things how he does? ( Three time’s a pattern, you thought as you threw your bags into the cab, wiped the tears away, and tasted iron. )

Your anger is a good thing. A pretty girl said against your lips. And maybe that was the only the second time someone had praised your angry and the first time that you could remember. It’s fucking hot. It wasn’t the validation you craved, exactly, but it was enough for you that first year of college. You kissed her and you kissed her and you convinced yourself that you were in love with her not because she thought your anger, something that pushed you away and away and away from most everyone else, was something to be admired, something hot. 

Your anger is a good thing. A college professor told you after a lecture about declining ecosystems. Animals and plants and microorganisms were dying off. They were not dying to put food on the table, they were dying because of the avarice and carelessness of humans. When called on, you could not bite your tongue, could not stop the spiel about the injustice of it, the horror of it, and the ways the world was being ruined. Another pin, one calling for more environmental protections, was added to the collection of pins that adorned your bag. 

Your anger is a good thing. You thought as you packed up your bags, leaving to studying the wildlife on a Greek Island over the summer. A professor had suggested it, handed you a pamphlet for the aboard program for a summer research program for undergrads and a fall semester spent there hosted by your university. You applied nearly as soon as you got back to your dorm, and when you found out you got into the program, your excitement was nearly palpable. You would be helping out with research that might change the world, might help save a burning planet, and you could not imagine a better summer. 

Your anger is a good thing. You reminded yourself as idyllic life on Kaos made you consider staying. It lulled your anger into a dull thing, sometimes, on the days you had off from the research program. The beaches and the green and the sleepy smiles of the native residents of the Island, it left you with lowered blood pressure, and you wanted, perhaps selfishly, to never leave the beautiful beaches and the quaint village. Of course, of course, you forced yourself to remember the flaws of your world, the animals elsewhere that were dying for no purpose, and the people that were dying because of hate alone, and you knew, deep down, that you could not stay there for the rest of your life.

PERSONALITY EXPANSION 

adventurous→ Deep within your heart, there has always been a want, the all-consuming and clawing kind, to find excitement wherever and whenever you went.

fervent→ Your passion is a sort of undying thing. Once you set your mind to something, you are unshakeable in you convictions, and, with words or your fists, you will fight for what you believe with a fiery passion.

loyal→ While you are not the most friendly person, once you begin to care about someone, it’s almost impossible to chip away at the affection you feel for them.

protective→ Perhaps it is only natural to want to see those you care about out of harm’s way but, with you, it is an all-consuming thing, something that keeps you up with worry and forces your hand when someone you care about has been hurt.

aloof→ There is a distance between you and most people, a need to keep you heart safe from the many ways that people have hurt you before. To you, it is basic cost-benefit analysis that led to your decision to keep people at arm’s length rather than something more akin to fear.

argumentative→ Biting your tongue has not been your strong suit since you left the halls of your second-level school. University has thought the value of your words, even as you voice raises and blood pressure spikes, especially when your voice raises and blood pressure spikes.

irascible→ Burning alongside your passion is anger that you cannot ever seem to tame. Perhaps it is you anger, the way an injustice causes you blood to boil, the ache in your fists when men get a bit too creepy with a woman, the metallic taste as you bit you tongue in your youth, that fuels your passion.

resentful→ A bitterness runs through your veins, coloring the world a grey-tinted red, only made worse by the ways the world and basic human decency seems to crumble all around you.

TLDR  (TRANSPHOBIA TW, VIOLENCE TW, DYSPHORIA TW)

Morrigan Driscoll was born in Galway, Ireland on July 1st, 1999. She spent most of her life in Galway, growing up there and going to school there until she was sixteen.

Her deadname is not important, so unimportant that I didn’t bother to think one up so please don’t ask about it. 

Mora was always an angry child, prone to fighting and arguing with just about anyone she ran into. While her early fights were centered a lot about how she fight a disconnect between how she felt and her assigned gender, later it was also about how people were treated in society. 

When she was fourteen, she came out to her mother as trans and began to transition, even if Irish law wouldn’t have let her legally change her gender identity. While her mom was entirely supportive, her dad was less so, not ever really understanding why she needed a big deal out of this gender stuff. 

In 2015, a month after the end of the school year, Mora and her family moved to Dublin to avoid the stigma that she had been facing in Galway at her school since she started to transition. This was something that her dad held over her, acting like it was just more proof that she was being ridiculous about the entire thing. 

This was also the year she legally changed her name and gender since Ireland passed legislation that year. 

As supportive as her mom was, she never really challenged Mora’s father’s ideas and how he talked to Mora, so that led to a pretty strained relationship with both of her parents until she moved out for college. She doesn’t really talk to her dad much anymore but she does talk to her mom from time to time. She’s not really a part of Mora’s life but Mora’s not exactly that torn up about that. 

She goes to Trinity College, getting a degree in biology, and summer research and fall semester hosted by the school brought her to Kaos three weeks ago. 

While she’s on the island, she’s staying with Jonas !

She’s always been the activist type, going to protests and advocating for the causes she took up. Trans issues, women’s issues, and environmental issues are particular important to her but she does what she can for most causes she supports.

And similarly, she has always been a fiercely protective person of people who she think need, and those she is close to. 

Her anger is still very much a thing getting her in trouble. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS

I want all the connections but I have a page with a few ideas that you can find here !!

[teachanarchy]

Queer self-knowledge in young Appalachia: a retrospective

The culture of homophobia and advocacy in North Carolina public schools in the 2000s, how it fit in with the broader context of the American LGBT rights movement, and how it compares with the conversation on trans issues and HB2, 10 years later

We were strange children. We were obsessed with androgyny, or unable to imagine ourselves growing up. Sometimes we were just acutely alienated, for seemingly no reason. We were vulnerable, and that made us angry. This, at least, hasn’t changed.

Each of us started out in a vacuum, finding clues only by serendipity: talk shows, offhand comments from parents or teachers. We were drawn to certain stories before we had an inkling why. For me, it was those fantasy novels where a girl has to disguise herself as a boy. For others: “Middlesex." Oscar Wilde. “Ma Vie en Rose”. Webcomics. Fanfiction. Certain online forums. When we ran out of stories, we started searching for more. When we couldn’t find any, many of us wrote our own.

We came of age in rural Appalachia under the Bush administration. Proud of its reputation as a neighborly environment, it was nevertheless overwhelmingly White, Baptist, and working class, with cultural roots deep but not broad — which often meant a deep-seated hostility when it came to the encroachment of outsiders, racial, religious, economic, or otherwise.

Growing up, I was enough of an outsider for other kids. I was quite earnestly called “hippie,” like it was the 1970s, and once even “heathen,” like it was the 1670s. It wasn’t until a few years later that I was called “lesbian” by anything but implication—and, as far as they were concerned, they didn’t need a worse word than that. (Sometimes the bullies know something you don’t.)

This was the era of “that’s so gay" and “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." It was euphemism and silence, overt harassment, willful misinterpretation of the political rhetoric of the time, e.g., “I’m not homophobic, I’m not afraid of gay people.”

It was playground games called Smear the Queer, and maybe your occasional (charitable!) “lesbians are hot, but gay dudes are gross.” I once saw a classmate get gay-bashed by being called “Clay,” as in Aiken, from American Idol, who wasn’t even out at the time.

In some ways, things changed at light speed. When my sister attended the same middle school eight years later, she told me that all her friends there were into “Glee.” I was shocked. Didn’t that show have a sympathetic, openly gay character? Like, on purpose?

In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to perform legal same-sex marriages. I was in the ninth grade. It has been much noted that, for better or for worse, this particular issue became symbolic of the LGBT rights movement as a whole, but in the case of many sheltered Southern children it was quite literally so.

“Do you believe in gay marriage?” was (and, I suspect, still is in some circles) a code for “Are you super homophobic, or naw?” It was a neutral way to feel out someone’s views; it didn’t always have to get ugly. (And if I was spoiling for a fight, I assumed I was just being righteous.)

When we strange children found each other, we thought it was for a shared love of certain stories—and it was true—but for many of us it wasn’t the whole truth. I’ve heard so many reports of closeted kids’ witch-like ability to detect one another that I know better than to call it a coincidence.

Sometimes, my friends and I would host crossdressing parties. It was the only word we knew for what we were doing: bringing skirts and ties to swap with each other, doing each other’s hair and makeup, then sitting around eating snacks and feeling cool.

The word “transgender” was little-known at the time, at least around there. I was familiar with it, but only for having done quite a bit of research on the subject. One friend came out to me as trans our sophomore year, with a kind of furtive terror that had me half convinced she’d killed a man. Another came out just months after I first described the concept to him. I kept their secrets and snuck them both clothes and books. This was the opposite of the vicious confrontation I felt I was bound for, but it would turn out to be some of the most intimate and soul-growing work I did in those years.

In my entire high school career, I knew of a small handful of gay and bi kids, three binary trans kids, and a whole bunch of us who wouldn’t or couldn’t, by appearance or deed, perform gender the way we were expected to—but all of us were subject to the same kind of harassment, the kind broadly directed at “gays.”

And so we were in solidarity with the out LGBT kids, or considered ourselves somehow parallel but non-intersecting. Some of us came out eventually too, but not until years later—due to self-deception and self-preservation, certainly, but also because the words for how we felt were either inaccessible or simply did not exist yet. In some ways, it was like a microcosm of the urban queer communities that came decades before us—the dichotomy between gender and orientation mutable, the choices before us limited to either denial or invention.

Whatever our reasons were, we considered ourselves allies, and we got political. We had a Gay-Straight Alliance, sort of (the school forced us to broaden our scope and change the name to “Diversity Club”). Most of our activism was small in scale, providing safe spaces or making simple demonstrations of hypocrisy.

One boy was sent to the principal’s office for wearing makeup and forced to wash it off despite his argument that there was nothing against it in the dress code. A friend and I once saw in our health teacher's notes that the safest sex was married, monogamous, and heterosexual; we agreed to walk out of class if he ever said it out loud, but to our mixed relief and disappointment, he never did.

Most Thursday afternoon meetings were not really revolutionary enough for my sensibilities, but once a year the Diversity Club was the center of a firestorm: the Day of Silence, a national student protest held every April. Symbolic of the oppressive silence imposed by homophobic classrooms and hallways, it is criticized in some mainstream activist spaces for being too passive, for literally shutting up LGBT students and their allies. In our school, though, it was a high-stakes gauntlet that brought local free speech debates to the fore.

We had our supporters, but we also had teachers deliberately assigning oral presentations on that day, students throwing us against lockers or wearing homemade T-shirts with slogans like “I didn’t want to talk to you anyway, faggot," or “Exit Only” (with an arrow pointing at the ass).

We were organized. We were silent if we could afford to be, wrote down the names of students who would verbally and physically assault us, and lobbied administrators not to excuse the absences on religious grounds when conservative (or just unprincipled) students stayed home the next day for a counter-demonstration they called “Day of Truth.”

Not only did our actions draw adult protesters to campus, it was also closely documented by scaremonger right-wing websites for people all over the country to weigh in on. A quick Google search of my high school’s name and “Day of Silence” still yields headlines from those years such as: “Silenced on the Day of Silence,” and “AWOL ACLU?” whenever a student was sent home for a homophobic T-shirt, or “Students excused for skipping gay day,” whenever administrators caved on the Day of Truth thing. If the eyes of the nation were on us, we didn’t have a clear idea to what extent, or whose eyes.

In 2004 (again: my freshman year, as well as the year Diversity Club was founded), a handbook for North Carolina conservatives was published, entitled “Homosexual Indoctrination: How Safety Is Used to Promote Homosexuality in Schools.” It named GSAs and Day of Silence as among the biggest threats to family values, using words like “cunning” and “dangerous.”

Frankly, I would have been thrilled to know my enemies considered me dangerous.

Denial is one hell of a drug, though. It wasn’t until I was safely graduated and out of the South that I fell in love and finally admitted to myself that my interest in queer issues was more than just academic. Figuring out my gender took even longer. For me it had always been something personal, abstract, and unnamed. I once mentioned something about it in Diversity Club, for a friend to high-five me with an enthusiastic, “Yeah, genderqueer!”—but even presented with a term that undeniably described my experience, it took at least five more years to internalize it.

In 2008, my very first semester of college, I cajoled my way into an upper-level class on trans and intersex studies (for, you know, some reason). The first thing the professor told us was that this was a very young field of study, and anything she had to teach us could become obsolete in a matter of months. She was right: for example, as the socially and medically acceptable narrative of transness has broadened, “MTF” and “FTM” have fallen out of common parlance in favor of more inclusive terms like “transfeminine” and “transmasculine,” and nonbinary identities have gained a relatively undisputed place under the trans umbrella. That was what it took for me. Some of my other friends took even longer. Some probably still don’t have it worked out.

But of course it wasn’t just nomenclature that kept us in the dark. And it wasn’t just a dearth of role models, although that was certainly the case as well. We dreaded acknowledging that not only were we involved in a crusade for justice, we were among the vulnerable. Living authentically had to mean making a statement, throwing your lot in with a group currently under fire, and that was frightening. It felt like coming home, but it also felt like painting a target on your own back.

In 2012, Amendment 1 was passed in North Carolina, and same-sex marriage, by no means legal at the time, was explicitly outlawed just for good measure. I remember the sympathetic murmurs from my college friends. I remember waving off their condolences, claiming it didn’t affect me personally, but knowing that it sent a clear, cruel message. Of course, Amendment 1 backfired after only a few months when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down, effectively legalizing gay marriage there and in several surrounding states.

History repeats itself. Just as America is patting itself on the back for not being homophobic anymore, the so-called “Transgender Tipping Point” (as Time dubbed it in 2014) is in full swing. In many ways, the spotlight is a boon to the community, but it also sheds light on those who are trying to stay hidden. Today, HB2, North Carolina’s infamous “bathroom bill,” feels disturbingly familiar.

Harassment in bathrooms was certainly a problem for my peers when we were in school — I remember one friend asking, "Why can't they have a bathroom just for gay kids?” and I remember laughing just imagining the moral panic. Now it has become the new dog-whistle political issue, just like “gay marriage” before it.

I have a straight, cisgender Christian friend still living in our hometown, who in 2002 was wary about the lesbians on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but who has grown into a kind and positive man. He recently told a story on Facebook about shopping for a purse for Mother’s Day when he was approached by a stranger who demanded to know, “Transgender, are we?” (like he didn’t need a worse word.) I think my friend meant to highlight the absurdity of the situation, but I found it chilling.

The tipping point is a mixed blessing; when people weren’t aware of the concept of transness, they didn’t exactly know what to look for. Before, the word wasn’t reaching the ears of people who needed it, but now it’s used like a slur in the mouths of people who hate what it represents. And this kind of hypervisibility brings a well-documented backlash of violence.

I have every reason to believe this round of miscalculated legislative aggression will hasten its own demise just like before, but that’s hollow comfort. People will die because of HB2. They already have. By others’ hands or their own, as a public spectacle, a threat to the rest of us, or so privately that no one else ever finds out why.

I know that for kids in school today, this is going to be felt acutely. I know that being a child on the front lines of this kind of struggle is a special kind of helplessness that grows a special kind of rage. I can’t help feeling both all over again on their behalf, but to me, it feels more like a flare-up of an old injury.

I visit often, but I never moved back home. In large part I stayed away for the same reason anyone from the rural South does: to find work. That said, I’m not the only person from our small school who came out and moved to New York. There’s a reason it’s a classic.

Lots of us left, or tried to. Some of us have been forced back into the closet. Some were able to stay put and strike a balance, but not nearly enough. I have a very typical queer Southern expatriate chip on my shoulder: furious at what happened to me there, furious at what still happens to my people, furious that anyone else would use their suffering as a rhetorical cudgel to distract from the exact same shit happening in their own backyards. Guilty for leaving them behind.

Obviously there is work to be done everywhere, but the appreciable “gay drain” towards more welcoming areas—absolutely understandable considering the hostility many of us have endured—most certainly deprives our hometowns and slows their progress. It happened to us; overwhelmingly, we had to form new communities for lack of existing ones to join (that we knew of). Our history has been suppressed so thoroughly that it took me years to even find out there had been a different “Diversity Club” immediately before I started high school.

Even so, I suspect this guilt is self-indulgent. It’s clear, based on my conversations with people currently involved in North Carolina public schools, that this generation of student activists is doing amazing work, savvier and more connected than ever. Queer-Straight Alliances are productive, popular, and allowed to be accurately named.

As of this writing, a transgender high schooler suing for bathroom access is on his way to the Supreme Court, and Twitter hashtags like #illgowithyou have made for highly visible allyship. Although modern social media makes it easier to both amplify and attack student effort, we still aren't going to hear about the vast majority of their work: mentorship and solidarity, like victimization, are often quiet and deeply personal.

It’s inspiring to see how far we’ve come, but for my generation it’s been hard not to grieve for the childhoods we could have had. If I'd been born 10 years later, we catch ourselves speculating... Maybe I would have figured myself out earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t have suffered as much; maybe I could have dated in high school; maybe I could have convinced my parents to get me on puberty blockers before my growth spurt. And so on. After my first NYC Pride, even as I ranted about the hypocrisy of banks and police marching in the parade, I was crying uncontrollably into my tingly beef noodles over what it would have meant to me as a teenager.

Today it’s almost impossible to live in the kind of ignorance we were born into. If you live in a city, you can probably find an in-person queer community. If you have access to the right parts of the internet, you can find an imperfect but robust intra-community conversation no matter where you live.

If all you have is the news, it’s scary and demeaning, but still much more informative than it used to be. The barriers to self-knowledge — geography, education, privacy, technology, stigma—are more manageable all the time.

Then again, some things haven’t changed enough. My high school’s GSA still has to account for conservative reactionaries and preempt concerned parents. In a video made only three years ago, members of the club recited an extremely thorough disclaimer into the camera: “Day of Silence is not gay. Day of Silence is not about politics. It doesn’t mean that you support gay marriage, and it doesn’t mean that you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

Meanwhile, I may have left town, but the only boy I ever personally reported for harassment on Day of Silence (striding through the halls bellowing “You’re all going to Hell!"), is still there. I’ve known him since kindergarten. He’s a police officer now.

This election season has been hard on everyone in my little diaspora. Every echo of the chauvinist climate of our adolescence has us panicking, terrified we’re going to lose any growth we’ve made in the last decade — as a politicized community, but also as individuals who remember being isolated, uncertain, and afraid. Strange children. For us, the two are bound up almost too closely to separate.

Logically, I know that kind of progress can’t be so easily undone. I’m sure this cultural ebb and flow is typical. I’m sure we’re just young. This is nothing compared to what our elders have seen. I just hope by the time we’re elders ourselves, our own experiences will seem just as extreme, and just as destined for victory.

Note: this piece was written during the rhetorical hellscape leading up to the 2016 general election. Despite the results, and amidst the protracted battle for North Carolina’s governorship, I still believe everything I’ve written here. Whatever’s coming, things will never go back to the way they were. That’s both a warning and a promise. Please stay safe.

[gyrlversion]

Author Christina Patterson reveals how she finally defeated adult acne

Relieved: Christina Patterson had been struggling with acne since she was 13

The doctor looked down at his notebook and sighed. ‘In that waiting room,’ he said, ‘I’ve got patients with real problems. What exactly do you want me to do?’

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. I cupped my fingers round my chin.

I couldn’t stop touching the deep, red, painful lumps there. Please, I wanted to yell, just make them go away.

When I saw that doctor I was feeling desperate. It was part of my job to go on a stage and present public events, but a few weeks before, my face had exploded with throbbing red bumps that developed into giant yellow pustules.

I plastered my face with foundation, but some of the pustules burst and encouraged new crops of yellow lumps, like mushrooms springing up after rain.

I was 34 and had been struggling with acne, on and off, since I was 13.

I first felt a sprinkling of tiny bumps on my forehead at the same time I started noticing boys. I was prescribed antibiotics and used all kinds of lotions, none of which worked, and even tried giving up chocolate, which didn’t make any difference at all.

Acne is embarrassing and upsetting as a teenager, knocking confidence at just the time you’re trying to summon some up. But it’s even worse when you’re an adult.

I was working in a bookshop as a 23-year-old when the scattering of normal spots on my face suddenly burst into a mass of red lumps that seemed to pulsate under my skin. I was referred to a dermatologist, who put me on Roaccutane, a drug that shrinks the oil glands, helping stop pores becoming clogged with oil and inflamed with bacteria.

 Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt sick. Acne was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night as I slathered ointments on my sore, weeping skin

It was meant to be a miracle drug, and I waited for that miracle to happen to me. Instead, almost every pore on my face seemed to turn into a red lump, which turned into a multi-headed pustule. Soon, there seemed to be more pustules than normal skin.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt sick. Acne was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night as I slathered ointments on my sore, weeping skin.

My doctor referred me to a specialist hospital for skin diseases, where I was blasted with ultra-violet light while standing in a metal box like an upright coffin.

It burnt off most of the spots, and quite a bit of the skin. For about a year, my face was much better, but then the spots came back. I tried more antibiotics. I tried homeopathy. I tried acupuncture. I tried Chinese herbs. I saw a nutritionist.

Many people think acne is a teenage problem that passes, but it isn’t. ‘Half the patients I see are adults,’ says Professor Tony Chu, a dermatologist and founder of the charity Acne and Rosacea Association UK.

‘I see patients in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. I had one patient who was 85 and fed up with being told she would grow out of it.’

There are, he explains, two major causes of acne: hormones and stress. ‘If you’re under stress,’ he says, ‘the adrenal glands start pumping out not just adrenaline and cortisol, but a lot more male hormones.’

It’s these hormones that cause the changes in oil production and the blockage in the pores.

A former acne patient himself, Professor Chu knows more than most about the distress it can cause. Many of the patients he sees have been put on antidepressants. Some are suicidal.

When my acne was at its worst, I came pretty near to it. Sometimes it felt like too much of a challenge to walk down the street.

Claire (not her real name), 54, knows what that feels like. We worked together years ago, and both felt huge relief when we opened up to each other about our lifetime of secret acne shame. Hers started the summer she was 14. ‘The boys in my class called me Pizza Face or Gangrene,’ she says. ‘Strangers would stare at me. I felt deformed.’

No wonder she spent most of her adolescence on antidepressants.

Christina Patterson is the author of The Art of Not Falling Apart

Like me, Claire was semi-permanently on antibiotics, which made little difference. Like me, she didn’t dare come off them, in case the acne got worse. In her 20s, she wouldn’t stay with friends because she didn’t want to be seen without her thick mask of makeup.

‘I always wanted to be an actor,’ she says. ‘But my self-worth was wrecked by acne.’ Claire didn’t feel better about her skin until she was 40, when she had a baby and her spots largely disappeared.

Duncan, 57, who contacted me after reading about my acne in my book, The Art Of Not Falling Apart, has also struggled with it for most of his adult life.

‘I drank a lot,’ he says. ‘I realise now I was self-medicating.

‘I wasn’t socialising. I was sitting in the house, while my friends went to the pub.’

Duncan wanted to be a quantity surveyor. He went for his interview on a hot summer’s day. ‘I had a jumper on top of a shirt because my back always bled, because of the acne,’ he says.

‘All the guys were wearing just shirts and I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t go into this.’ I ended up doing dead-end jobs for a while.’

When he was 28, he was put on Roaccutane and the acne cleared up. He still sometimes gets break-outs and has severe scarring.

Duncan works in mental health and enjoys his job, but has regrets about the things he missed out on. ‘There’s always that feeling that I didn’t do things that my pals were doing,’ he says.

For Professor Chu, these are familiar stories. He has spent his professional life trying to help people avoid this kind of pain, but is not a fan of Roaccutane.

Under the weather: The health concerns worsened by cold weather

This week: You’re prone to getting fat.

Getting fatter in the winter isn’t just about eating comfort food.

We have thousands of different bacteria in the gut, known collectively as the microbiome.

Each bacteria has a different job and a 2014 study found that, during winter, the balance shifts so we have higher levels of Firmicutes — bacteria that absorb calories.

Why this happens isn’t known, but ‘during winter your body wants to extract and store as much energy from food as possible’, said University of Chicago researcher Dr Emily Davenport.

However, we might also contribute to the change by swapping to a stodgier diet.

High levels of plant foods in the diet create a more diverse microbiome, ‘but if you’ve been eating three or four servings of fresh produce a day and that shrinks to one in winter, you may change the composition of your gut bacteria accordingly’, says Dr Davenport.

‘Fifty per cent of patients have a relapse,’ he says. ‘If they relapse after the first course, they’ll relapse after every course.’

He has, he says, had patients referred to him who have had 12 courses already. And the side-effects can be ‘dire’. Not just, he says, the depression and risk of suicide, but ‘acne fulminans, where your acne goes ballistic, in places you’ve never had it before’.

It’s thought this may be due to the presence of microcomedones, deep-seated blockages that can blow up into large pustules. This is what happened to me when I was prescribed Roaccutane.

What saved me, in the end, was a drug called Androcur. It blocks the effects of androgens — male hormones such as testosterone.

The drug, which I took as a daily pill, is also used as a hormone therapy for transgender patients undergoing transition treatment from female to male.

It gave me a migraine every month, but I was so desperate I put up with it and took it for three years. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, at 39, I had to come off it, but the acne never came back.

It’s 40 years since I first developed acne. So what, I ask Professor Chu, are the most exciting new treatments?

‘The trouble with acne,’ he says, ‘is that from the financial point of view, it’s not a high flier.’

Acne treatments are not considered worth the multi-million investments it takes to get a drug off the ground.

There are, he says, more developments in treating acne scarring than in the spots themselves. For the scarring, he uses an electric automatic needling machine that produces 100,000 tiny pinpricks a minute, which some studies have shown can cause a 600 per cent increase in collagen production.

‘It’s fantastic, but I prefer not to treat acne scarring. I prefer to prevent it,’ he says. So say all of us. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to treat my acne successfully, but I’m relieved I now just have my wrinkles to worry about.

The Art Of Not Falling Apart is now out in paperback (Atlantic, £8.99).

The post Author Christina Patterson reveals how she finally defeated adult acne appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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Author Christina Patterson reveals how she finally defeated adult acne

Relieved: Christina Patterson had been struggling with acne since she was 13

The doctor looked down at his notebook and sighed. ‘In that waiting room,’ he said, ‘I’ve got patients with real problems. What exactly do you want me to do?’

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. I cupped my fingers round my chin.

I couldn’t stop touching the deep, red, painful lumps there. Please, I wanted to yell, just make them go away.

When I saw that doctor I was feeling desperate. It was part of my job to go on a stage and present public events, but a few weeks before, my face had exploded with throbbing red bumps that developed into giant yellow pustules.

I plastered my face with foundation, but some of the pustules burst and encouraged new crops of yellow lumps, like mushrooms springing up after rain.

I was 34 and had been struggling with acne, on and off, since I was 13.

I first felt a sprinkling of tiny bumps on my forehead at the same time I started noticing boys. I was prescribed antibiotics and used all kinds of lotions, none of which worked, and even tried giving up chocolate, which didn’t make any difference at all.

Acne is embarrassing and upsetting as a teenager, knocking confidence at just the time you’re trying to summon some up. But it’s even worse when you’re an adult.

I was working in a bookshop as a 23-year-old when the scattering of normal spots on my face suddenly burst into a mass of red lumps that seemed to pulsate under my skin. I was referred to a dermatologist, who put me on Roaccutane, a drug that shrinks the oil glands, helping stop pores becoming clogged with oil and inflamed with bacteria.

 Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt sick. Acne was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night as I slathered ointments on my sore, weeping skin

It was meant to be a miracle drug, and I waited for that miracle to happen to me. Instead, almost every pore on my face seemed to turn into a red lump, which turned into a multi-headed pustule. Soon, there seemed to be more pustules than normal skin.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt sick. Acne was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night as I slathered ointments on my sore, weeping skin.

My doctor referred me to a specialist hospital for skin diseases, where I was blasted with ultra-violet light while standing in a metal box like an upright coffin.

It burnt off most of the spots, and quite a bit of the skin. For about a year, my face was much better, but then the spots came back. I tried more antibiotics. I tried homeopathy. I tried acupuncture. I tried Chinese herbs. I saw a nutritionist.

Many people think acne is a teenage problem that passes, but it isn’t. ‘Half the patients I see are adults,’ says Professor Tony Chu, a dermatologist and founder of the charity Acne and Rosacea Association UK.

‘I see patients in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. I had one patient who was 85 and fed up with being told she would grow out of it.’

There are, he explains, two major causes of acne: hormones and stress. ‘If you’re under stress,’ he says, ‘the adrenal glands start pumping out not just adrenaline and cortisol, but a lot more male hormones.’

It’s these hormones that cause the changes in oil production and the blockage in the pores.

A former acne patient himself, Professor Chu knows more than most about the distress it can cause. Many of the patients he sees have been put on antidepressants. Some are suicidal.

When my acne was at its worst, I came pretty near to it. Sometimes it felt like too much of a challenge to walk down the street.

Claire (not her real name), 54, knows what that feels like. We worked together years ago, and both felt huge relief when we opened up to each other about our lifetime of secret acne shame. Hers started the summer she was 14. ‘The boys in my class called me Pizza Face or Gangrene,’ she says. ‘Strangers would stare at me. I felt deformed.’

No wonder she spent most of her adolescence on antidepressants.

Christina Patterson is the author of The Art of Not Falling Apart

Like me, Claire was semi-permanently on antibiotics, which made little difference. Like me, she didn’t dare come off them, in case the acne got worse. In her 20s, she wouldn’t stay with friends because she didn’t want to be seen without her thick mask of makeup.

‘I always wanted to be an actor,’ she says. ‘But my self-worth was wrecked by acne.’ Claire didn’t feel better about her skin until she was 40, when she had a baby and her spots largely disappeared.

Duncan, 57, who contacted me after reading about my acne in my book, The Art Of Not Falling Apart, has also struggled with it for most of his adult life.

‘I drank a lot,’ he says. ‘I realise now I was self-medicating.

‘I wasn’t socialising. I was sitting in the house, while my friends went to the pub.’

Duncan wanted to be a quantity surveyor. He went for his interview on a hot summer’s day. ‘I had a jumper on top of a shirt because my back always bled, because of the acne,’ he says.

‘All the guys were wearing just shirts and I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t go into this.’ I ended up doing dead-end jobs for a while.’

When he was 28, he was put on Roaccutane and the acne cleared up. He still sometimes gets break-outs and has severe scarring.

Duncan works in mental health and enjoys his job, but has regrets about the things he missed out on. ‘There’s always that feeling that I didn’t do things that my pals were doing,’ he says.

For Professor Chu, these are familiar stories. He has spent his professional life trying to help people avoid this kind of pain, but is not a fan of Roaccutane.

Under the weather: The health concerns worsened by cold weather

This week: You’re prone to getting fat.

Getting fatter in the winter isn’t just about eating comfort food.

We have thousands of different bacteria in the gut, known collectively as the microbiome.

Each bacteria has a different job and a 2014 study found that, during winter, the balance shifts so we have higher levels of Firmicutes — bacteria that absorb calories.

Why this happens isn’t known, but ‘during winter your body wants to extract and store as much energy from food as possible’, said University of Chicago researcher Dr Emily Davenport.

However, we might also contribute to the change by swapping to a stodgier diet.

High levels of plant foods in the diet create a more diverse microbiome, ‘but if you’ve been eating three or four servings of fresh produce a day and that shrinks to one in winter, you may change the composition of your gut bacteria accordingly’, says Dr Davenport.

‘Fifty per cent of patients have a relapse,’ he says. ‘If they relapse after the first course, they’ll relapse after every course.’

He has, he says, had patients referred to him who have had 12 courses already. And the side-effects can be ‘dire’. Not just, he says, the depression and risk of suicide, but ‘acne fulminans, where your acne goes ballistic, in places you’ve never had it before’.

It’s thought this may be due to the presence of microcomedones, deep-seated blockages that can blow up into large pustules. This is what happened to me when I was prescribed Roaccutane.

What saved me, in the end, was a drug called Androcur. It blocks the effects of androgens — male hormones such as testosterone.

The drug, which I took as a daily pill, is also used as a hormone therapy for transgender patients undergoing transition treatment from female to male.

It gave me a migraine every month, but I was so desperate I put up with it and took it for three years. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, at 39, I had to come off it, but the acne never came back.

It’s 40 years since I first developed acne. So what, I ask Professor Chu, are the most exciting new treatments?

‘The trouble with acne,’ he says, ‘is that from the financial point of view, it’s not a high flier.’

Acne treatments are not considered worth the multi-million investments it takes to get a drug off the ground.

There are, he says, more developments in treating acne scarring than in the spots themselves. For the scarring, he uses an electric automatic needling machine that produces 100,000 tiny pinpricks a minute, which some studies have shown can cause a 600 per cent increase in collagen production.

‘It’s fantastic, but I prefer not to treat acne scarring. I prefer to prevent it,’ he says. So say all of us. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to treat my acne successfully, but I’m relieved I now just have my wrinkles to worry about.

The Art Of Not Falling Apart is now out in paperback (Atlantic, £8.99).

The post Author Christina Patterson reveals how she finally defeated adult acne appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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