#and as a feminine man/ish that happens to be fat

[gabiioartist]

mermay day 11 I just wanted to draw a pretty boy merman, and I think it's important to draw fat men because they are pretty! I've drawn a bunch of fat mermaid, but not merman yet lol so here it is. Also in this new rendering style because it's really fun! I'm still playing with it but I like it so far

[imustbenuts]

im free from yakuza kiwami 2. fuck the writing in this one. this was a complete mess of pulling from the most popular generic east asian drama tropes at the time of 2006 and having it be handled by a super inexperienced writer at the helm.

i went from having no expectations, got somewhat surprised, only to end up downing alcohol and laughing hysterically before the credits rolled. so that should set the mood for how i feel about this one. thought vomit under the cut, a lot of info dump about culture incoming

yakuza kiwami 2 is pure heterosexual east asian romance bullshit.

im gonna just. describe as best as i can what i know and remember from the general media coming out from the 90s to the 2010s in around this part of the world before i just start explaining why i think this story is a mess.

so. 2 parts i swear is responsible for this rubbish.

1) East Asian Beauty Standard

the general consensus for a beautiful feminine woman AT THE TIME in this sphere is the following

be willowy thin (fat = lazy and ugly)

have black hair that ISNT short (dyed = too much individuality, too much WESTERN INDIVIDUALISM, gasp how dare!)

fair skinned (bc dark = she works in the fields and is from a lower class)

young. if you heard of the term "Christmas Cake" in japan context, yeah. (ie women over age of 25 are undesirable)

be educated and refined, bc that indicates class and femininity (failing this means shes vulgar and gasp like a barbarian)

be submissive to her male peers in the sense that her authority cannot override his at least in public (for the sake of his face)

dresses feminine and not like a man (trousers and jeans are man-ish. traditional clothing, skirts and dresses are preferred. the further back the stronger this sentiment is.)

incidentally, theres a lot of classism tied to this EABS due to sinocentric culture influences. it has to do with the chinese court system and how korea and japan copied it and a lot of the culture wholesale but. anyway. thats like over 1000 years of history in there thats not really worth detouring to rn.

and also, the worth of a man is sometimes (not always) upheld by how classy and feminine this wife of his is. as of 2024 though, this line of thought is still around in the more conservative pockets. also, the education might not matter as much these days as how deep her and her parents' pockets and wealth are.

moving on.

2) media tropes

so. off the top of my head.

if you wanted a popular romance drama in this time period, the popular offerings no matter where you looked tended to offer the same flavors of tropes.

the woman always has dark hair, is fair skinned, thin and younger than her male love interest. ive never seen this broken or subverted in my time absorbing via osmosis the dramas playing on local tv growing up in the early 2000s.

everything else about her can be subverted though. sometimes she can wear fancy pants or have short hair to indicate her strong individualism. BUT, her personality no matter how strong it begins, no matter how her intro begins will 99% of the time encounter an effect where catching feelings turns her into a meek loyal woman to her love interest.

bc she cant override his authority in this culture context.

at worst, she becomes highly irrational and even hysterical in the dramas when bad things happen. this includes things like love triangle, or a fallout of family business, drama, plot or whatever. she would cry and sometimes even die.

see: sawamura yumi. sayama kaoru.

meanwhile, the male love interest can be anything. ive seen middle aged guys to young good looking upcoming actors playing the lead, with looks varying from haggardly okay to young and handsome. it. really depends on the genre.

depending on what specific country it came from, the drama would have the male either grow, become manlier (by learning honor ig), become stupid in the name of love, but he rarely if ever actually dies. the woman effectively becomes yoshi for mario to lauch off on when they're crossing a chasm

the romance is forced. a lot of the BIG LOVE SPARK ie kissing happens in tense moments bc it builds drama, but in reality comes too fucking close to sexual assault (some of the old jackie chan movies does this iirc for slapstick even)

see: sayama getting kissed right after handling her biological father's ashes less than 24 hours ago and admitting to kiryu that shes scared. this scene right fucking here.

bc in general, the scriptwriters for popular dramas tended to be guys themselves and tended to write more human dudes. and the women in the stories are reflective of the ideal societal expectation at the time: being a Refined Housewife.

so her character development is often headed in the direction of marriage and being a stay at home mom.

if it sounds a little like tradwife bullshit, it is.

Refined Housewife

(i have massive negative thoughts about this which i KNOW for a fact is a thing bc a lot of these societal culture femininity was impressed on me as a kid in a world where it was already getting increasingly impossible to have 1 spouse be a SAHP. and also i hated the whole thing about giving face to the patriarch of the house when i personally saw so much ego dick measuring from my uncles. anyway understand that this is both a bias an a lived experience, so proceed with that in mind)

there is a problem with the Refined Housewife expectation: education.

in general, education has been a good metric to judge how classy or smart one is in asia's largely on-the-surface meritocracy based culture. people will look at each other's school first and then judge them from there, and pretty hard too.

so everyone regardless of gender will be expected to study super hard. and bc having good test scores and going to good schools looks good for the family's face, parents will often pile on tuition to the child to get them a leg up in life.

bc also no good degree from good school means no future.

but then... the woman is expected to be a housewife. 🙃 meaning... the education, her accomplishments, are kinda... tossed away in this context. put a pin in this.

it wont matter how much she studied or accomplished, bc the expectation is that the woman would marry and obey her husband, and give him face/honor that way. the kids will come eventually bc having kids = being filial to ones parents in this context.

also uh. no, having adopted kids is not thought of as being filial. continuing the bloodline is.

and if you've been paying attention, then yes, ive been skirting around the backbone of sayama kaoru's writing foundations this entire time.

Her story has been butchered so clumsily i cant even...

lets just. ugh.

she fits the EABS standard, her tropes are trying to subvert the expectations of a womanly woman in this context, she has IMPRESSIVE education and career achievements. she works in a male dominated field, and is keenly aware of sexism. she is strong, stronger than her male peers, at least we are told.

by 2006s standards, its still considered a fresh take with those alone in japan. sexism there is its own flavor of crap. (if you noticed ive not spoken about LGBTQ+ stuff at all, its bc how ridiculously BINARY the expectation is at that point in time. it still is today but less so)

however, the writing has this sense of trying to copy the popular tropes at the time while not fully understanding and dissecting them, and ends up butchering sayama's character before the romance even properly began.

i mean, for fucks sake even, sayama and kiryu has a whopping 14 year age gap. when im told these are supposed to be believable people living in japan, this is too big for me to just go 'oh ok!'. and remember the Christmas Cake thing? shes 25. (FUCKING--!!!! !!)

the problem here that i see is the writer trying to apply all of those while trying to play the tropes straight. trying to imitate. trying to make a statement but then finding out theres nothing within yourself to stand by what you want to say and backtracking.

we are told:

sayama is strong yet she goes down with 1 slap by random thugs and needing kiryu to come in and body them. because romance ig.

we are told shes a yakuza hunter but she doesnt scare a single one beyond her introductory scene.

she goes from defiant and bossing kiryu around to getting her actions overridden by kiryu and ryuji, both men, towards the end

her subtext is that shes not feminine and therefore conventionally undesirable, but then kiryu tells her shes actually feminine and therefore desired, as if its all that matters.

she becomes so stricken by grief and freaked out that she runs off solo to deal with ryuji in the most out of left pocket planning ive ever fucking seen.

and then yells as she takes out her police baton to take down the big yakuza dude, drawing attention and turning herself into a hostage.

i know the writing will fumble but i didnt expect it to fumble this bad.

for all the good the surface chemistry kiryu and sayama has, its being undermined by a fundamental failure to understand tropes and then using said tropes as a crutch so much that everything here has become a bloody mess.

this failure of over-relying on tropes without understanding them extends to yumi too. sawamura yumi was young and beautiful, and became the Refined Housewife to the Not-Male-MC and ends up regretting it, and gets killed for it.

her defining trait is that she is beautiful in subtext. thats. thats what the tattoo is. in a world where the tattoo makeths the person, thats what she is and all that she is.

dear lord.

ive read up a bit more on sayama and you know what. good that she chooses her career over kiryu. the romance would have caused both of their characters to explode with the trajectory this was heading in. ffs sayama could have had her own game. she has so MUCH potential.

and also GOOD that the writer is forced to think of kiryu in the position of the Stay At Home Parent for haruka and the orphanage down the line!!! subverting the fucking traditional BS expectation! yes!!!!!

all i got was sayama and kiryu making out before the bomb went off in front of my alcohol and salad while they're like 'eh, haruka will forgive us for dying :')'

and i ran out of alcohol.

sexism? maybe. incompetence? definitely.

hhgrhgrhrghrghrgrhgr wow this got long. ugh. guhhhhhh.

[radfae]

I've had trans people try to tell me I'm a man because I have pcos. They were my friends. When I left from hanging out, I cried in my car. That's when I was radicalized tbh. I think it was like 6 years ago. I'm 27.

Idk how trans people can see a fat woman who isn't traditionally feminine and say she's a man & then when she insists she's not a man and would never want to be a man they double down and try to tell you how you feel. Just insane.

I got bullied in school for being man-ish (fat, not curvy, bad skin, awkward, not feminine.) I felt really vulnerable being called a man by people who I felt very close to. They even said I'm halfway there because my testosterone levels are naturally really high. One of them pointed out a chin hair i hadn't plucked. 🙃

Honestly, still kinda hurts, but I also feel relieved to have those people away from me now. They were my friends for a long time then they started acting so fucked up once the trans stuff started becoming popular. Wish people would come to their senses.

so sorry anon. i can’t imagine this happening to me. sounds like people that were insecure in their own identity and took it out on an easy target

[sqbr]

And this goes double for trans women. And, as kentsarrow said in her tags, WOC, disabled women etc also get "degendered" in ways that in no way lessen their experience of sexism.

I saw this on my dash, had that thought, then spent the next day thinking about how this sort of thing works for other sorts of trans people, before realising I hadn't actually reblogged it, and had to scroll through the blog I saw it on for a few pages to find it again.

I didn't even come to any neat conclusion. Certainly my own experience as an afab genderfluid person is that being called "woman(-like)" or "man(-like)", while always misgendering, can come from a wide variety of motives.

I've encountered plenty of people who just treat me like a woman as a straightforward expression of sexism and transphobia. But sometimes women treat me as "effectively another woman" in a way which is intended as a compliment and way of extending solidarity. It still feels bad but not in quite the same way.

And I have occasionally encountered their opposite, "feminists" who treat all afab trans people as "effectively men" in a very radical feminist "men are evil" way, yet may emphasise our 'feminine'/un-manly traits as a deliberately dysphoria inducing insult (we're trying to be men and not even doing a good job!). Meanwhile some trans men have treated me like a fellow man, genuinely intending it as a compliment and granting of status. Again, still feels bad, but not in the same way!

And I imagine there's a whole other mix of experiences for trans men, AMAB agender people etc. Hell even for cis people, "you're acting man-ish/woman-ish" can mean very different things. Back when I identified as a woman I had a few cis men compliment me on being Like A Man in the sense of being good at maths, not wearing makeup, having an enjoyably un-girly vibe etc. I knew they'd have despised me as mannish-in-a-bad-way if I wasn't still conventionally attractive, conciliatory, and feminine presenting, but I'm not sure they did. And plenty of women get put down for being too "girly".

Anyway! No neat conclusions but many thoughts! *passes on these thoughts to tumblr*

EDIT: Also, weirdly, I don't think I've ever had someone overtly call me mannish as an insult, even though I've spent the last ten years or so presenting androgynously while being visibly afab, increasingly fat, and sometimes in a wheelchair. I've seen it happen to other people, including feminine presenting cis women. But I just seem to consistently ping people as like... a harmlessly frumpy cis woman. Gender policing is inconsistent!

Bigots denying a woman her womanhood aren't actually granting her the status of "man" esp with all its attendant privileges.

Degendering is a form of dehumanization. The goal of misgendering/degendering a woman is generally to treat her as a disposable object, unworthy of even the conditional and dubious "protection" that women are supposedly due under patriarchy.

If they actually saw her as a man she wouldn't be targeted in these ways, and "man/manly/male" would never be spat at her like an insult.

[fairymint]

It is clear that Felix wants to go all the way through with the current fase he is in. But would be there any feminine traits or features that would remain in him at the end?

....I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure what you mean by this, anon. You might do well to try rephrasing your question. Clothing and hair wise, he already has his gender-nonconforming points of style- He's more comfortable/confident with things like mid-length hair, makeup, and the occasional thing like dresses.

meanwhile, he doesn't really get dysphoria from not having bottom surgery, nor getting pregnant. the only other thing I can think of are his curves which seem to be natural chubbiness- HRT didn't get rid of everything, fat wise. A year and 4 months sits around the "16-17" mark as far as 2nd puberty goes- quite a bit of work 'done', but cis male puberty is around 5-7 years ish anyways- he's still catching up.

but no, he would have never been comfortable with "she" pronouns, meanwhile feminine terms are only okay for someone close to him in an ironic and 'gay' way.

I doubt much more masculinization is coming besides the things I'm writing him as already having- facial hair and a larger dick...but we don't know to what extent and will not for another, oh i dunno, 4-5 or 8 more years- if something major happens, don't worry I'll keep y'all posted-

as a minor thing, I don't know if we can exactly hold him to white man beauty standards- tbh my assumption is that the bit of native/brownness and japanese in there is gonna keep his phenotype a smidge more androgynous- quite a bit of gender-stereotype is very western/white/eurocentric and doesn't allow wiggle room for traits possessed more often by POC.

and I'm sure being a flaming homosexual doesn't help, but I see Felix as mixed presentation, probably amab 'passing', dwarfism taken into account. smol man.

[cornwaiidesu]

a boohoo-y deep dive into my ~psyche~ cuz I had A Moment at work yesterday :P

I care too much about what people think of me. plain and simple. I have been this way since I was a little girl. my cousins would pick on me because I was the special baby girl out of the three of us and they were the two older boys. they would pick on me for being shy and soft spoken and liking girl things, and I wanted them to like me because I thought the two of them were the coolest boys in the world, so I grew to be a little tomboy. I wanted to like fighting games, and anime, and comics because those were "boy things".

but then when puberty started to set in, being a tomboy wasn't cute anymore. at least according to the bullies I had in middle school. usually boys who would call me a d*ke and make fun of me for wearing baggy t-shirts and loose pants and my dad's army jacket every single day of my life. "girls are supposed to be feminine" so obviously something had to be *wrong* with me and they would speculate shit about me directly in front of me. try to engage me in the conversation just to rub it in and of course that made me feel like shit.

so then in high school I try to flip the switch again. I start wearing tighter fitting clothes. I grow my hair out because I was constantly being dogged on my hairstyle even tho that shit was kind of REVOLUTIONARY FOR A 12 YEAR OLD LIVING IN IOWA. PROPS TO TEENAGE MRH. even back then I was a little punk. :3c I digress tho.

the beginning of high school was when I started my curse that lives on in me. I wear earrings every day of my life and I do because I convinced myself back then that I would be mistaken for a boy otherwise. and I still hold that fear because it was upheld! I started wearing dresses and skirts to school, but it didn't matter because dudes would still flip me shit and say that I was a predatory lesbian and strip me of my femininity. adults would still call me young man and sir despite being a 16 year old wearing make up, denim skirts, earrings, and covered in beaded necklaces. I would wear SO much jewelry to try to get it through people's minds that I was a girl.

but then through that came another weird thing where, like, though I was dressing ~feminine~ I was still "one of the guys" because I had a crude sense of humor and still liked comics and anime and wasn't as, for lack of a better word, "delicate" as my other (white) female friends. but then AGAIN I *couldnt* be one of the guys because it was a secret special task force essentially and I was just a stupid girl.

a lot of that fucked up my sense of self with my sexuality growing up too. I knew at a fairly early age that I was bisexual even though I didn't know there was a word for it, but I didn't want to admit to liking girls because that would mean my bullies were right about me, and if they were right about that then what if they were right about all the other horrible stuff they said about me being hideous, and gross, and weird?

because! if that was right too! a boy would never fall in love with me and have dance sex with me like Johnny and Baby do in Dirty Dancing! or would never save me from being sacrificed like Rick saves Evie in The Mummy! I'd be alone forever because boys would think I was big ugly butch with no value to them, and girls would think I was a predator and would always have to be on their guard to make sure I wasn't gawking and fawning over them. (and let's not even GET into how my religion fucked up my sense of morality about this. I have since grown out of it at least.)

every person I ever confessed to having a crush on has turned me down (mostly politely though, thank god) in my life except for one and a half. (one said they also liked someone else as much as they liked me, and since I had no self-esteem at 18 I was like "oh that's cool. let's date anyway." because I just wanted to have a boyfriend. that's the half.)

the other we kind of connected right away, whirlwind romance for me, but I don't think they ever quite felt the same way and that ended in an actual divorce anyway.

I've had three "relationships" my whole entire life and no more than that, and in my head i told myself thag was because I am fat, and ugly, and MASCULINE, no matter how hard I tried to be sweet and charming and pretty.

as I've aged I've learned about the systematic de-feminization of black women since all the way back to slavery times and shit and I won't claim to be an expert about that shit but it makes me cry that it's just ingrained into people's minds. it doesn't give us a single fighting chance from birth. it makes me feel like I'm going to be a lonely freak for the rest of my life because iowa is like one of the whitest places in the world, and my own internalized racism has convinced me all my life that I don't belong in black spaces because I'm not "authentic", I'm watered down. I've been called a half-breed and an oreo so many times.

I can't be black, I can't be white, I can't be a boy, I can't be a girl. I'm a copper penny in a jar full of nickels and dimes. I don't look the same, I'm not the same shape, and im not as shiny.

though I am attracted to women I have this OBSESSION with men, and to have a relationship with a man as PROOF. SOLID PROOF. that I am a valid woman, because there seems to be no other way for me to get the point across. and it's important for me to get the point across because I grew up with my business being the punchline, and curiosity of my peers, and the concern of my family. I couldn't exist without speculation from someone.

and then came a moment last year while I was at work, where a co-worker told me something that a person in another department who I did not get along with had told them. that I was a mean, jealous bitch who wanted them "out of the way" because they were getting too close to my friend that also worked at our store, and I was obsessed and in love with her and trying to stop a relationship from forming between the two of them. and it made me sick to my stomach. it was the thing I had been trying to steer clear from, from the moment I knew I was bisexual, but I hadn't tried hard enough. my anxiety shot through the roof. I had a panic attack. I broke down sobbing in the bathroom. this person was vengeful, I had nothing to do with them or that friend anymore, and I hadn't for months but they wanted to spread this rumor about me. and even if I truthfully denied it like I did, it didn't matter, because a person could take one look at me an think "you know, I can see that." because that's what people thought my entire fucking existence.

I cried off and on the rest of the day. I was too sick to eat dinner. I barely slept. and then I ended up puking what little food I had to eat that night anyway. I still barely ate the following few days I stayed home from work because I still felt so sick to my stomach with anxiety and at one point I got faint-ish when I had finally returned to work, and had to have help to get to the breakroom and force myself to eat. I bawled to my step-mother about it all, that I didn't feel comfortable at work anymore because it was just my words against theirs, and my bosses never held the person accountable for any of the other bullshit that they caused anyway.

it took me a VERY. long time to move past this incident. I think the only thing that ever ended up fully distracting me from it was covid and my uncle and my father's health both taking a turn for the worst last June. and even then, in between, I had such loooow moments. I self harmed and wrote mean notes to myself, stayed in bed for days. I wrote my own suicide note just to feel better, even though I knew I'd never do it. I was too chicken, but I just wanted to write it and pretend, just to release the depression pressure in my brain.

I've since been better for the most part. I know my parents love me and that I'm important to them, when just a few years ago I used to claim that I was an orphan because I was convinced that my father and my step-mother never cared to see me again because I was an ungrateful brat. I still get very lonely and long for a significant other but I'm kind of just coming to terms with the fact that unless I put myself out there, it won't happen, and im just too insecure to take the steps.

yesterday though, just for a second, out of nowhere, I thought about the claim that person had made about me even though the atmosphere at work has since changed, and things are patched up between me and my friend.

that gossiper is irrelevant now, but I couldn't help but have a little meltdown about it anyway because. like. apparently that's the vibe that I give off. because that's what everyone has said about me from day one of my life. and. I just. have to keep dealing with it. I'm stuck like this. and it sucks. and that little thought about it reminded me again.

[polyputthekettleon]

How's the heterosexual part of my sexuality doing? And other transition/brain stuff.

One of the hardest parts about being married to someone I'm not fucking while also being the parent of a six-year-old while also living in a very small house is that the options are limited when it comes to masturbating.

When I wake up, I'm usually thinking of cock and boys. I always think of K first, even though K is now D and isn't a boy. Still, old habits die hard, and when she was living as K, ohhhh my god did fucking that boy when I woke up become a habit. The feel of rising into wakefulness with his body wrapped around me and the dependable warmth of his hard cock pressing up against me... While it didn't happen every single morning we spent together, more often than not he would wake too and the two of us would shift and wriggle around until he could slide his cock into my wet, hungry cunt... and oh god, the bliss.

To be snuggled and warm and full of the most glorious cock I have ever encountered in my life... god, what a way to wake up.

I miss it, but today I'm holding that grief at bay, trying to just enjoy the memories as they come, the feeling of absolute utter acceptance and love when he would moan and sigh to feel my cunt already wet, how good it felt for him to not bother with asking or foreplay (because he already had my blanket consent), and just start fucking me, sometimes right as I was waking. GOD I love waking up to sex.

And then the other morning when J rolled over and his hand rested on my butt as he slept, I thought about how good it would feel for him to keep going with his fingers and slide them inside my aching cunt, which then gave way to a memory/fantasy of the night when I slept between two men in Vegas because my friend was sleeping with the boy she'd been fucking and I wasn't going to leave her alone. One of the boys really did feel me up as we were drifting off, and I loved it but couldn't pursue more, because I was married and monogamous (okay, ish), but they were otherwise respectful of my stated (rather shakey) boundaries (this was an awfully long time ago). But in my fantasy, they both kept touching me, pulling my clothes back off and touching and teasing and fucking me. I wonder if that was the closest I ever came to being in an actual threesome with two men. (God, I hope not.)

So in answer to my title question, I'm honestly not sure. I'm giving myself permission to feel desire for cock, for someone who's a man, for the feel of stubble on my skin, for the gender dynamic I had with K and J as my lovers. I know I do desire it, and I know that one of the things that is making stuff easier right now is that D's sex drive has come back (for now anyway). She's felt interested in and willing, as well as been able to fuck me with her clit (her preferred word for her penis these days). It's been fucking wonderful, because I missed that part of our relationship so much. I am really enjoying getting to know her new body, which continues to change, and honestly there are so many things about relearning her and discovering what's changing that is just the best thing in the world. This weekend, I realized how soft her skin was feeling to my touch, and I was overwhelmed with joy and wonder, happiness for her because of how she's getting to become more like how she wants to be in the world, and how cool it is that 4mg of estrogen can do that. Mind absolutely blown. She also genuinely has some more fat in her breasts, and her nipples are so very, very sensitive, and it's just all so amazing.

She's also been sharing more with me about her plans for surgery, including her contemplation of SRS. If I'm honest, it's painful to listen to her talk about cutting on her body, but I'm working hard to remind myself that how she experiences and pursues a positive relationship with her body can be different from how I do it, and it be okay and not mean than she's rejecting me. That was a super helpful takeaway from my last therapy session; that my tendency is to interpret social difference as a form of rejection, which is not true. I suspect that that reframe, combined with the medicine, is helping this feel better. Additionally, I found some good YouTube videos of women talking about sex after their own surgeries, and I gained a ton of additional understanding from reading a shit ton more about vaginoplasty. Having the surgery and its results demystified, as well as hearing people talk about it still being good and fun, definitely helped me wrap my head around the possibility of D maybe one day choosing that. Plus, it's not like I haven't fantasized about fucking her while she has a cunt like mine... There are things I *love* doing with Y that I would fucking **love** to do with D, and can't. Plus seeing her feeling happy and affirmed in her gender is AMAZING, and really whatever helps that happen more often is what I want for her.

That said, I really really really really like her clit. As it is right now. And I would like for our parts to always be able to fit together, and I would really like for us to be like the trans and cis women in the amazing porn she and I watched together -- they were both gorgeously femme and beautiful and sexy, and one of them just had a cock the she used for penetration, and that didn't detract from her feminine-ness (at least for me) *at all*. To me, that feels like a more accessible strap on, plus one where both partners get pleasure at once. What's not to love??

Ultimately, I know she's the only person who will be able to decide what is right for her. I wish her parts felt 100% comfortable for her, and that she was as comfortable with our current genital combination as I am. I also wish that that surgery didn't sound like it would put a 6 month or longer haitus on sex. I also also wish I didn't feel mildly cut off from my feelings right now, and that has nothing to do with her transition except for that it is likely making it easier for me to not obsess and panic about her surgeries.

But to get back to my question... How's my heterosexual side doing? I think she's okay... I think she's numb, along with the rest of me. I did say I wanted a break, right? Here's my break. I'm trying to figure out how to feel about it.

[queeragainsthumanity]

I'd like to say you know who you are but you're too self-involved for it to click

Heres a list of things you do that you should really really stop:

1. Fetishizing queer people

2. Appropriating stories, experiences, and language from queer, poc, and fat people when you are cishet, white, and skinny. Actually just stop making stuff up in general thx

3. Infantilizing queer ppl. I don't want to hear how that trans or gay person is "SUCH A SWEETHEART OMG"

4. Changing the scope of your life narrarive to somehow be queer and outcast-y and how you TOTALLY understand what we go through and you basically have been through the same thing. Ie: not believing in bisexuality but now that it's "in" talking about how you've had bi BEST FRIENDS every year growing up??? (If you knew anything about bisexuality you'd realize it's never "in") or working at a summer camp that catered to all types of children and just because there was a one week long trans and gnc group you say you volunteered at a "trans camp"...UMM?? Just stop editing your stories to seem like you're so active in the lgbtq+ community when ??? You literally have the most problematic views of us?

5. Saying that you give off lesbian pheromones and that every lesbian you encounter is attracted to you and hits on you. And don't make up stories about how a lesbian was aggressively flirting with you at a bar?? First off, ew. Secondly, this is problematic because it capitalizes on the predatory narrative assigned to lesbians by the media and is straight up harmful. You are not a poor innocent straight girl being seduced by the big bad gay tm. Lastly, constantly talking about how lesbians are attracted to you does NOT make you a better ally, does NOT make you fit in better with your queer friends, and is NOT okay.

6. Assigning pronouns without permission. That gender-questioning person you worked with? Who said they wanted to be a man but started crying and didn't like when you used he/him/his pronouns? Did they ASK you to use he/him pronouns? No? Don't. Fucking. Assume. You weren't being a proactive ally, you were being presumptuous and shouldn't have made it about you and how confused YOU were about why it upset them. Because ??? Of course???

7. Forcing items usually considered gendered on trans people of the opposite gender. For example, pushing feminine jewelry etc on a trans guy who was obviously super uncomfortable and was trying to say no thank you in 50 different ways. (You know that chat you were so mad about? One of the things we talked about was how to refuse the gift without hurting YOUR feelings.) Or how you were pushing me to try your new make up when I first came out as gnc and found it really dysphoria inducing and despite saying no several times and our other friend who saw how uncomfortable I was ALSO telling you to stop, you kept PUSHING.

8. You considering yourself an ally doesn't make you one. And being an ally doesn't make you an unfalliable. Be accountable. Ie: when you misgendered me OVER AND OVER AND OVER again and instead of just a short sorry and moving on you prattle on about how long you've known me as a GIRL and how hard it is for YOU etc etc etc EVERY SINGLE TIME. Until it wasn't worth it for me to correct you anymore.

9. Thinking of yourself as some-type-of-queer because you're a girl who is also attracted to trans guys. TRANS GUYS ARE GUYS. IF YOU'RE A GIRL WHO LIKES GUYS YOU, MY ONCE FRIEND, ARE STRAIGHT. Don't put masexual in your bio when A. You are attracted to men only and not anyone else who may fall into the larger scope of masculinity. B. That is a term meant for and coined by nonbinary ppl to use. C. It has been explained to you why you shouldn't use it. And D. You agreed to the reasoning and agreed that you weren't masexual. - I have the screenshots-

10. Saying how EASILY you could pass for a guy if you wanted to and how you could just bind and no one would know and rambling on about it for god knows how long when. 1.you're cis. 2. You know I can't fucking bind for long periods of time if at all since my ribs are so fucked and you talking about how easy it would be for you is dysphoria inducing and just ignorant. 3. Binding is fucking hard. You have never binded a day in your life. Stop lying. 4. Saying you could pass as a guy does not make you trans or queer in any way.

11. Refuse to date a trans guy because you're afraid he'll "use you as a crutch while he transitions" That's both ableist *and* transphobic dear.

12. Using the phrase "fully-transitioned". Especially to gatekeep who is trans and who isn't. Once a trans person comes out they're the gender they say they are. Full stop. All trans ppl are trans. Even if we haven't gone on hormones and haven't gotten any surgery. Even if we never do.

13. Sharing pictures of me and my then new girlfriend in discord and talking about how CLOSE the three of us were. Proximity to queerness doesn't make you so. Also don't share people's business without their explicit permission other ppls interesting stories don't make you more interesting.

14. Trying to buy friendships. Gifts don't make your problematic behavior less problematic or harmful. They don't make your actions more excusable.

15. Equating polyamory to cheating. Like I can't even with how at odds I am with your problematic ish.

16. Making queer the cool new thing to be. You want our rainbow flags and camaraderie and stories. You want to be different and special from the "norm". But that's the only part you want. You want to be a convenience queer, cishet except in safe groups where you want to talk about how different and outstanding you are.

You wear us like a jacket you can put on and take off at your leisure. OUR IDENTITY IS NOT AN ADORNMENT. It is a part of us we carry ALL THE TIME. When our clubs are being shot up, when we are called f*ggots in the street, when we are having our rights taken away, when we are politicised and conceptualized as if we aren't even people, when we don't feel at home in our countries or our bodies, when we are being leered at and asked by too-loud-breathing men if they can join us in bed...

I could keep going forever. I'm still in those chats even if I don't have the spoons to talk to anyone, even though I don't feel welcome anymore. I know your stories. I've seen your lies. I could have jumped in so many times and been like "that never happened" or "actually that's my story and that happened to me" but it didn't seem worth it. You were never cheated on (that was me), you've never had 3 jobs (me), no one asked you to be a nsfw instagrammer (that was my gf planning to be one herself) and on and on and on.

This was supposed to be a vague call out post but I've never been subtle a day in my life. You can't contest any of this. I have the screenshots hun so come at me if you want.

I decided tumblr would be the void I'd scream my outrage into.

Also how dare you make the tragedy of someone losing her father about you. How dare you share details about their lives with strangers when she asked us all to keep it private. And how dare you embellish it with made up details to make you seem more interesting. That was the line.

[lokibannerpool]

Update on the Mun

so i have been lurking on here for a while, not really doing any drafts or replies. I’m not abandoning this blog and these muses, I just haven’t had the motivation lately to be active on this account. I have been active on my other blogs for the most part. you can find me on @forcedintoperfection @thevirginandthefool @worldsfastestpredator @strongestcullen  @zorii-unknown and/or @brokenprincessofasgard  

Now for the shitstorm that is my life right now.

If you’re basically homeless and you know it clap your hands  *clap clap*

So we (by we I mean my mom, little brother and I) finally got evicted for reals like around Feburary-ish. My mom’s bright idea for temporary living was to move in with the worst person possible, her crazy ass aunt (on my grandpa’s side). 

Not only was the move stressful, but living here is terrible, and most of that is because my mother’s aunt (i have disowned her so no she’s not my great aunt) is doing everything in her power to make us feel unwelcome. Before I go into details, let me point out that my brother refused to come stay here because he has never felt welcome in this house, so he’s staying with family from our grandmother’s side (still crazy, but slightly more reasonable). And although I technically still have a room there, I did not stay because they hate animals and the great aunt that lives there once told me that if she could make it up the stairs to our old apartment she’d kill my cats. Later she denied it, but yeah... that’s the kind of crazy on that side’ of the family.

I was going to take my cats and live in a hotel from paycheck to paycheck. i had done the math and i could afford 7 days from one paycheck if i literally didn’t buy anything else, and the hotel had free breakfast i didn’t have to worry about food at least if i could save some of the breakfast for lunch then probably do dinner at a family member’s house. (yeah not the best plan but for me if I’m giving up my cats to a shelter I’m giving up on life. plus hotel accepted animals and was legit cheaper than a putting them in a pet hotel which would have been 22 a night per cat... i have 5 cats and a part time job) BUT low and behold my mother pulls some strings with the aunt (only after catching me crying on eviction day because I didn’t know what to do with my babies) and suddenly I can keep the cats as long as they stay in the basement. Not ideal, but more affordable for me so I take it.

Now back to the hell house I’m trapped in.

1) It took a while to move everything in, but I think we were almost full settled in by a Friday or Saturday night. On the Monday (which was like day 3 of living there) my mother’s aunt not only called me repeatedly on my phone, she kept yelling my name from the first floor. When I finally become conscious enough to go see what she wants, she is telling me that I sleep too much, It’s ridiculous how much I sleep, I need to go get a job, I’m not going to sleep my life away in HER house, yada yada, then she goes on about how by my age she was living on her own and paying off her own car (both were confirmed to be lies by sources that were alive at that time. crazy bitch was still sleeping in the bed with her mother at 22).. Now maybe you think that’s not so bad? but I forgot to mention one little detail. 

It was only 8:10 AM  and I had class at 10 am.

My alarm clock was literally set to go off 20 minutes from that time. Not only was it early as fuck, but I had a class to go to so it wasn’t like i was going to be staying in the house all day. SHE KNEW I HAD CLASS, THAT WAS WHAT PISSED ME OFF THE MOST. I had literally been discussing my classes with her for weeks prior to even moving in with her. Another thing that interested me was how she conveniently waited until my mother had left to start harassing me. anyway, so i get dressed because im mad as hell by this point, and i get ready to leave in under 15 minutes so we’re around 8:30am by this point. When I get downstairs she is demanding that I come into her room, and against my better judgement I do but I’m in no mood to talk. She takes one look at my face and asks me “why are you pissed off?”  As if she didn’t know why. I don’t want to curse her out because I wasn’t raised to do things like that so i keep my mouth shut. She keeps trying to get me to talk, and at this point angry tears that I have been trying so hard to hold back are falling and she tells me I’m being dramatic and I’m over reacting. I tell her I have to go to class more than once and she’s still demanding that I sit and talk with her, so I just walk out.    She calls my phone more than once but I don’t answer because I am a) driving and b) still mad as hell. she leaves voicemails. 1 saying that im being overreacting and stuff. the second comes a few hours later with a fake apology after she apparently talked to my mother. I later find out that she lied to my mom and told her that she forgot I had school, yet when I was not trying to talk to her she was telling me i had 2 hours before i had to be in class.. so yeah and that was only the start of day 3 of living there.

2) Fast forward a few days because in this family, we apparently just go on like nothing happened after conflicts like this. My mom comes to me in the morning and warns me that the aunt had threatened to call the human society to take my cats away because I ‘don’t spend enough time with them’. Which pissed off my mom as much as me because she’s seen what I’ve done for these cats in the past 2 years. (especially with Brenda, who is a rescue stray I took in after she was covered in tape by strangers and either dropped at our door or she limped her way up the stairs to us for help, and the two litters of kittens she had in our apartment) 

The aunt confronts me about this after I come down to feed them by asking me “do you really want the cats” and then telling me not to get an attitude when I say “of course I do” rather defensively. She tells me the b.s. she told my mom to which i point out that we literally just got here, i have classes 5 days a week and work 7 days a week. Plus, she’s usually sleep when I come in after work so she doesn’t see me dragging my aching body (still sore from doing the brunt of the moving) down to the basement to replace the food and water and spend time with them before I go to bed and I would literally be sleeping down there if it wasn’t for my mom nagging me about my health (which tbh comes second to the cats in my opinion but she disagrees). She doesn’t seem all that convinced, and my anxiety was through the roof for the longest because i wasn’t sure if i was going to come back to a cat-less basement after work. 

My therapist has been having an earful btw. Literally the week before I knew we were being evicted I spent most of a session trying to find something to talk to her about and now I have at least one new problem ever week. 

3) This woman has no respect for me or my mother. She’s verbally attacked my mother and berated her more than once. (today included) and at one point accused my mom of using her father for money(who died only 2 years prior, and who is the only one who took responsibility for making all the funeral arrangements and is still struggling to pay that bill because no one else wanted to help). This is sidetracking a little, but my mom did a lot for my grandfather. Brought his medical supplies with a loan she had taken out from her job, literally came to wash him up multiple times because his in house nurse wasn’t doing it, and pretty much ran every errand he asked for her and if she couldn’t do it she had me do it for her... so yeah to say she was using him was really fucked up and it really hurt my mom.

3.5) One morning (last week) i literally caught her and her ‘tenant’ (aka her brother’s ex girlfriend who he left for his wife 2 years ago and refuses to leave his family’s home) talking shit about me and my mom. How we’re dirty,  my mom walks too loud, complaining about us having mini conversations late at night (which only happened once), calling my mom fat, and saying that she’s not  ‘dainty’ and ‘feminine’ enough and they don’t know how she kept a man for so long... really just talking trash while im standing at the top of the stairs listening. I wait until they finish to say anything and they’re not even ashamed or apologetic. The aunt literally says “good. now you can tell your mom what i said” after  i said i heard just about all of it. She seemed offended when I refused to be her messenger. She then tried to talk shit about my mom to me, going as far to tell me that my mother a ‘fat slob’. And because I don’t want to be kicked out before we find a place, I have to bite my tongue and just walk away while she purposely baits me and tells me to ‘speak my mind’. 

There is so much more I could write about, like how she (a woman who has never had a cat in her life) is always telling me how to take care of my cats like I don’t know what I’m doing, yet she’s basing this all off the dog she had (but didn’t really want or take care of) over 10 years ago.  Or how she likes to try to provoke me or my mom (but mostly me because I’m the easier target I guess) whenever she’s bored. The fact that she forced cable boxes on us, then demanded my mom pay her $400 for the installation of the cable despite us both making it very clear we didn’t want it. How she’s always trying to say someone is trying to use her as if my mom isn’t paying $800 a month for two little ass rooms and a bathroom/kitchen we have to share with two other people And sooo much more. 

I’ve ended up self harming for the first time in about two-ish years while staying here. My suicidal thoughts are  happening very often and honestly I’ve turned to drinking my feelings away when I’m not cutting them away. I’ve literally been so stressed that my period disappeared for like 3 months (no im not pregnant. gotta be sexually active to get pregnant so yes its stress) and I’m pretty sure I’m developing some sort of repressed anger issues that I should probably mention to my therapist but I keep forgetting. 

So that’s pretty much what’s been going on in my life lately. 

And I don’t know how to end this so... there

[revy-likes-punk]

I’m a few hours into The Evil Within 2.  I’m on the way to the Theater in town after finding Sykes.  I gotta say The Evil Within 1 was more enjoyable for me.  I mean I’m still pretty early in, but TEW1 was way more inspired and thought-through.  Lemme run it all down:

TEW2′s improvements to gunplay and movement along with really good visuals are nice, but that’s kind of it.  I feel like the Phantom-Pain esque open world is really harmful to the horror feeling, it’s not very scary when I can just go fucking anywhere and am unbound by any mortal wall.  I feel like developers think that linearity is a black/white issue; either you’re super-linear, or balls out open world.  You can have a game be linear and still have exploration be a factor.  TEW1 wasn’t quite that, but you still could explore places to find shit like keys, or map pieces and other collectibles.  TEW2′s open world becomes a sensory overload and I just wanna play the main story quests so I can get through it all.  The design of Sebastian’s saferoom is interesting for sure, being his office at the KCPD but compared to the saferoom of TEW1 it pales.  TEW1′s saferoom was constantly changing, from newspaper articles related to character revelations appearing, to occasional creepy things happening that alter the environment.  Tatiana was meant to have an air of weirdness about her but it wasn’t overblown.  She rarely talked and she didn’t 100% have a feeling of knowing everything that was going on.  In TEW2 she talks way too much and seems to know more than she should.  TEW1′s saferoom created an interesting contrast; “safe” by Ruvik’s definition wasn’t very safe by our standards.  It was a place of safety in your mind where you couldn’t be physically harmed.  But it still felt creepy and you didn’t feel totally safe.  TEW2′s saferoom is too cozy, there’s a cat (yes I know that’s a callback to Juli’s DLCs in TEW1) and the only changing aspects are a corkboard in Sebastian’s room and a slide projector you can access with some dialogue.  There’s the upgrade chair from TEW1 that returns, only it looks like a regular chair, and returns to looking like it offscreen when you get up from it using the magic of camera angles (I actually like that a lot).  The upgrade tree is sort of nice but arbitrarily requiring a special item to progress further (Red Gel or High grade weapons parts) is honestly kind of dumb.  Just make higher upgrades cost more, for fuck’s sake.

TEW1′s setting I felt was way better.  Sure, a lot of people can argue that mental facilities are overused in horror, me included, but I still like them a lot as a setting; it’s why I liked Silent Hill and Outlast so much.  It’s not entirely to demonize the mentally ill; it’s because mental hospitals can very often become a place where people prey upon the mentally ill, as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and any recollection of early 1900′s asylums can teach us.  I would know, I live near one that’s kind of become an urbex hotspot because of its creepiness.  Outlast and TEW1 were examples where the focus was more on people doing fucked up stuff in the asylum.  It was a scary place, and the Jacob’s Ladder overtones of all the main cast going fucking nuts and nothing being 100% real was really creepy and off-putting.

TEW2′s setting feels like the initial intent was to tap in on some Stephen King stuff; a northeast american rural town, bad paranormal shit happening, the Haunted everywhere brings “Cell” to mind.  But beyond that, they don’t really go all in with it.  The designs of the Haunted are just not as varied as the first game; the first had Haunted that had barbed wire wrapped around them, a weird skin infection with boils, some were impaled, some were invisible and had a strange Cthulu look to them.  Some even had two heads and a KF Patriarch-ish chest tentacle; and on top of that there fat variants of these, and on top of that there were masked variants which were shown to be smarter, more tactile, and tougher, as they could duck and dodge shots better, they avoided traps and they could use firearms as opposed to the rest of the Haunted just using melee weapons.  Here, they all have the same base design; glowing eyes, weird boils and fucked up skin.  There’s like one extra variant that calls Left 4 Dead’s witch to mind; a feminine one that walks around cradling a kitchen knife, croaking all the way like a Clicker from The Last of Us, and it takes two “sneak kill” animations to kill.  And yeah, I know the comparisons to The Last of Us are a bit overdone considering The Evil Within as a whole is just The Last of Us with Japanese horror enveloping it.

The boss monsters all feel very basic; they all seem inspired by the Yurei of Japanese folklore (damn, that’s never been done before) with their long black hair and feminine bodies (even the rescue team’s psychologist Yukiko Hoffman looks like Samara with a medic BDU on).  Most of them boil down to a basic formula; “Woman’s body + ____”.  Woman’s body + a camera.  Woman’s body + more woman’s bodies + a buzzsaw.  Woman’s body + more woman’s bodies + MORE WOMAN’S BODIES.  Compare this to bosses from the first game; while not being the most unique, they at least were better than a bunch of half-baked variations on Kayako.  We had The Keeper, who was basically Sebastian’s Pyramid Head but with a more heavy-handed (ha) symbolism behind him.  We had Amalgam, which was a bunch of bodies together in a hideous mass of flesh, and that KF-Patriarch tentacle.  Laura was pretty much the only Yurei variant, and she was a spider-ish lady that had a bad weakness to fire.  Heresy was another spider creature with gross tubings and a maggot infested stomach.  Quell was a weird squid thingy, and Shigyo was this weird-ass water monster with the game’s characteristic SAW-esque metal head fixtures.  In fact, TEW1 had quite a bit of its aesthetic owed to SAW.  From Juli Kidman’s water enclosure and The Keeper, that both call back to Saw V, to the excess of tiled flooring and metal in places it shouldn’t be on people.  But it was fairly consistent for a Japanese twist on American horror.  While a lot of the monster’s symbolism and importance to Ruvik got kind of heavy-handed, it at least was there.  And it felt inspired to some degree.  TEW2 just feels all over the place.

Let’s talk about story.  Mobius is dumb.  They are dumber than dumb, a secret society pulling strings is not interesting, they are just annoying.  Ruvik should’ve been the sole antagonist of TEW1, having this added layer of dumb extra shit was unnecessary.  I feel like it wasn’t the best progression for Sebastian’s character, as well.  When a character has trauma that fucks with them and hampers their progress psychologically, it feels weird for your story’s progression to completely justify their paranoia about their kid’s death, then completely undo it by telling them the kid is still alive.  Juli and Castellanos feel like different people as well.  Stefano is another villain that is pretty uncompelling.  At the start he had plenty potential.  A lunatic, whose gimmick is art; he uses photographs to freeze his murder victims in time, a perpetual loop of being shot/stabbed/cut over and over again.  But as you get deeper in, he just gets fucking stupid.  Like oh, his background is “Oh no he photographed a dude getting blown up and got injured and now he liked to make snuff photography I guess.”  Come on, man.  Ruvik wasn’t the most interesting man in the world. he was an Alex Mercer-lookin’ dude with some weird and dumb justification but he at least had semi-understandable anger and some actual background.

Maybe I’m being harsh, I dunno.  I’m still playing TEW2 and enjoying it to an extent.  I just kinda find it a bit underwhelming compared to TEW1.  That’s all.

[filmphreak]

Adam & Eve Vs. the Cannibals

So I’m watching ADAM & EVE MEET THE CANNIBALS.

Yep. I’m watching a movie called that. By whichever name you’re calling it (this is a retitling - the original name had no cannibals in it). I like the CANNIBALS title best – obviously. I’m an Italian cannibal movie aficionado, so that makes my preference even stronger. But since I’m only partway through the movie, I cannot attest to the titular accuracy of what is clearly a re-monikering by a distributor for whatever market he was trying to reach. I’m guessing an American distributor redubbed it to make it more sellable to exploitation crowds.

Turns out, though, even though nothing remotely cannibal-y has occurred, it’s a pretty fascinating movie. And a pretty movie.

There is a depiction of Creation during the opening titles. Lots of lava and geological upheaval, plus some nice but probably not overly expensive color FX. It’s a groovy sequence. Following that,  in the fresh, new world, something bursts from the dirt. A membranous cocoon out of which Adam tears himself.

Lonely, he goes on to sculpt the figure of a woman out of beach sand. But the rain comes to wash it away as soon as he’s done. In his despair, he fails to notice that the sand is being rained away from actual flesh. Adam is no longer alone.

And they explore each other and their new life and environment. They watch other animals reproduce (obviously built-in stock nature footage, but it works).

Then there is the serpent. I never realized before this movie how awesome Satan (as per the post-Judaic, Christian re-ordering of the primitive Eden mythos, but that is another chapter in another book entirely) sounds speaking in Italian. With a snake as avatar. Sweet!

Adam keeps trying to keep her from snacking on the forbidden fruit but eventually temptation overtakes and she succumbs. He joins her. Then they REALLY begin to explore each other.

But nature turns on them. A horrible wind blows through. Interestingly, so far God is represented here through manifestation as Nature. I can dig it. Happy God equals serene paradise, a hospitable enviro. Pissed-off God equals storms, volcanos (destructive rather than creative now), even boulders. (This leads to a great Indiana Jones-like scene. The FX are simple but a blast to watch.

Still no gutmunchers, but I’m hooked regardless. I suppose now that they’re booted from Eden and worrying about clothes and such, maybe now their luck will sour and cannibals will pick a fight. Who knows? But I’m on board for the ride.

Now they’re wandering in the desert, an environmental cue for the absence of God. And now the couple is bickering. The honeymoon is over.

NOTE: The loincloth in no way detracts from a strangely blond Eve’s sexiness.

Now, left-turn blinker. The couple discovers that nature is an antagonist to them now (i.e. they are suffering the consequences of God’s displeasure). God’s displeasure here takes the form of a stop-motion animated pterodactyl-ish thing.

At this point, I don’t care if cannibals ever come into the story. Because this movie just gets better and better.

NOTE: The togetherness in facing conflict re-bonds Eve. The archetypal imagery of the Judaic Eden myth is present here, and I even find some progressions of thought from the source. Interesting.

Oh, man. Cavemen. 2001: A Space Odyssey this is not. But exciting it is. Let’s see where this goes. One must wonder if these are the titular cannibals.

Sooooo …  yeah. When you see the tribe of trogs back at their home in the side of a mountain or something, the whole cannibal movie parallels click. This isn’t exactly that, but there this movie (also Italian, fyi) and those cannibal flicks do share a lot of the same touchstones. Even if they are sometimes recontextualized.

And the way they start pawing at the blond Eve strikes a huge cannibal movie chord with me. Think Mountain of the Cannibal God, with Ursula Undress. I mean Andress.

This is just a really groovy primordial lost-in-the-jungle flick. Less violence and more archetypology. Go ask Joseph Campbell.

Anyway. Eventually the war of the sexes re-emerges as a stronger theme. Adam and Eve separate.

Did I mention this is an extremely beautiful movie? Adam may be alone now and left to jacking off and talking to himself, but he gives the film a chance to wander with him through some spectacular scenery. The whole movie has been a thing of beauty so far, and it doesn’t slack off now. Eve goes wandering through some foresty enviros of her own.

This leads her to more primitives. (Like she and Adam have been around for SO long yet.) Not trog, this time, actually more like the spaghetti cannibal movie cannibals, though I don’t know yet if they eat people. I’m starting to suspect not, as I think this title is completely gratuitous, yet oddly not 100% off base. The cavemen weren’t gutmunchers. I’ll have to see if these tribesfolk are or not.

Well, turns out there is a quite a bit of munching – but it all appears to be fruit and vegetables. Unless I missed something vital. Is this a commentary on the Old Testament’s pre-Noahite veggies-only diet as prescribed by Yahweh?

As soon as I say that, I think the captive Eve is being offered an animal to eat …. Oh, yeah, that’s an animal. Still, though, cannibalism this isn’t

And I still have to wonder if this isn’t a deluge-less analogy to the transition of vegetarianism to omnivorism in Genesis.

Uh-oh. Eve is learning to use her female allure, being all sexy and flirty for her tribesman guard. Damn freshy sexually awakened females (in our world, that’s teenage girls), wielding the weapon of their sexuality when they don’t even grok the immense power of those nuclear capabilities.

Still, she’s not without her just motives here. I mean, if somehow I was abducted by a primitive tribe fascinated by my fat (and sexy) ass, I’d flap my balls around if I thought that gave me a chance to manipulate my captors.

Oh, shit, and the cavemen meet the non-trog tribesman. I think some cannibalism just happened, like the cavemen ambushed a non-trog and had a quick pre-battle snack.

What a crazy, wonderful movie.

Yep, the cavemen combine warring with lunching. I mean, eating bits of your enemy is also deadly. Or a freshly killed foe won’t argue if you take a bite. So, yeah.

This actually excels expectations for viewers going in expecting another B-grade gutmuncher. Don’t get me wrong, my love for Italian cannibal flicks is broad and extends beyond the greats .But ADAM & EVE VS THE CANNIBALS solders part of the classic sketti gutmuncher into a wildly different yet markedly analogous piece of cinema. This movie benefits both from its freshness and its familiarity.

The movie is an artistic accomplishment, for sure. And I’m sure it pulled in lots of “exploitation” audiences. All around success? I’d happily grant this simultaneous arthouse/grindhouse status. (It isn’t as if the two didn’t overlap plenty.)

This one’s more of an onion than most Italian gutmunchers. And you never know what’s down in the next layer. I mean, now we’ve got a scenario where the cavemen have captured the non-trogs who captured Blondie Eve.

And, inevitably, Adam shows up pissed and stabbing semi-folks, brandishing his oh so phallic weapon (spear) around. And then we’re on the move, on the river, afloat in a bid for escape and freedom.

Now, I assume you recall that nature is not working synergistically with Adam and Eve, right? Well, let me just say this: Bear. OK, guy in a bear costume, but the scene manages to work anyway. And also to provide one of the scenes neater, if not overly bloody, scenes of violence. In your face, bear. Literally.

Segue. Now the film introduces the concept of pugnacious male rivalry for feminine affections. You could really study this one in a film class. Or psychology class. Awesomeness. They even work in a note of the female civilizing and taming effect on the male.

And then ADAM AND EVE VS THE CANNIBALS features what must be Creation’s first break-up! Or, maybe, just one of its first turn-downs. Still, it’s like high school before high school, right? Sniff!

(You could argue this is a really weird love story.)

Of course, it’s a lot of things. And the remarkable combination works wonders almost as great as Creation itself. (OK, maybe that was a tad hyperbolic. But I think my superpower is hyperbole.)

Awww, love scene. And that anachronistically vocal soft pop is back! Odd upon odd. Nothing if not a singular film.

NOTE: It occurs to me there is remarkably little nudity or violence compared to what you’d expect from such a film. Not that this movie has that big a category, Such A Film. I speak broadly.

NOTE: Adam and Eve stumble onto stock footage of bit cats eating a gazelle or whatever. They gasp. The music sounds oddly like Cannibal Holocaust’s score here. Only a watcher of these movies would notice that, but a watcher of these movies would notice that. A little tingle.

Now there’s snow and she’s in a more robe-y thing but she’s still sexy. Nice high leg slit (note).

I THINK ADAM JUST TOLD EVE “FUCK YOU”!

(*Rewind*)

Nope. Crap, he didn’t. He said “I told you.” As in, “I told you so.” The movie has resurfaced is war of the sexes theme, in a context of Eve feeling like Adam is treating her like a secondary citizen, lacking independence. There is a subtext of his questioning of her creative ability, which points to the patriarchal suppression of the divine feminine. The feminine creative power (womb) was an factor in primitive worship of the goddess. In this scene, Adam is using his creative skill to forge a weapon. She is making a little sculpture of an animal. Adam sees himself as useful and her as needing protection. (Of course, this also alludes to the male war tendency versus the female peace tendency.)

This argument of pragmatism – useful spear versus “useless” cub carving – points to the age-old conflict of what we can call War Vs Art. War can mean here – not necessarily just violent conflict between nations -  any endeavor based on severe pragmatism. The stereotype of the father who sees no practical value in a child’s desire to act rather than, say, join the family business or become a lawyer.  Those who who see creativity for creativity’s sake as without worth since it cannot turn a screw or fire a bullet or only rarely make money (Stephen King versus the world’s unpublished dishwashers who write in their sleep hours and hope – same dynamic as the struggling actor).

I won’t belabor it further. But, like I said, lots of onion layers here. A much better movie than maybe we had a right to expect?

The movie builds toward a tragic mood. Adam and Eve, lost and alone (but for each other, which shouldn’t be forgotten), nigh unto dying on a mountaintop blanketed in snow. Adam is ready to give up. But Eve encourages him. The ultimate transcendence of interdependence is reached. The film and its ideas achieve fruition. Adam and Eve are yin-yang. Only through their tribulations do they gain strength, insight and the ability to prevail.

Wow, an amazing scene of rumbling, cracking ice (more well-placed stock footage – I LOVE creative, mix-and-match filmmaking, sort of blending in found object art with traditional filmmaking). God is farthest from them. His wrath isn’t rage … but absence. The bleak world is breaking apart around them. But, of course, the desert of the soul provides the aridity for new spiritual growth.

Finaly, though, “wrath” recedes and a hospitable world is again alive around them. Life is peaceful. Their relationship with the divine is restored, as well as their relationship with each other. (There is so much subtext here – this film narrative is pregnant with meta like a babies-toting dog mom with a swingin’ ass tummy has puppies inside. I could say so much but it belongs in another essay, which perhaps I’ll get to one day.)

Also noteworthy is the reference to Earth’s cyclical nature, Persephone’s dying and rebirth, the seasons swirl, oroborous. Into this creative cycle is brought the focus point of Eve’s pregnancy. This is the final nearing climax of the film. The movie culminates at the altar of the creative sacred feminine. (NOTE: Again the music has a touch of Cannibal Holocaust melody, but more hopeful in tone.)

ADAM AND EVE VS THE CANNIBALS, neato title aside, is a gorgeous film, substantial. It offers not only grindhouse entertainment but also a heady delve into living mythology and archetypal truth. This movie is a gem and deserves more appreciation, but the nature of its uniqueness would fend off many a mainstream viewer.

I can at least ask you, dear reader (because what kind of egomaniac am I to assume more than one reader?), to go check this movie out. Please. Sincerely.

[joshuabradleyn]

The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image

The Importance of Self-Acceptance.

“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ― Lori Deschene

In order to unconditionally love your body, you’ll need to acknowledge and accept your whole inner self. Literally all of it, including the parts that you currently consider completely fucking unacceptable.

It’s a tall order, I know.

Accepting isn’t the same as loving, though. Accepting just means you acknowledge the reality and existence of everything about who you are with open arms and compassion, and without resistance.

It’s worth noting here that accepting something about yourself isn’t the same thing as giving up on self-improvement, or resigning to never changing it. Again, it’s just acknowledging that this part of yourself exists, and more importantly, that this part of yourself doesn’t make you any less worthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Most people fall into the trap of thinking that the only appropriate way to meet a perceived “flaw” is with rejection, resentment, resistance, and judgement. The hope is that by not accepting the truth of who they are, they will “motivate” themselves to change. Sadly, the exact opposite tends to be true.

Changing something about yourself is actually extremely difficult when you reject and condemn it. Likewise, it’s pretty damn easy when you’ve truly accepted it, and recognize that it’s existence doesn’t make you any less worthy of connection.

Let’s use weight loss as an example.

Let’s say you hate the weight you’re at right now, you consider it completely unacceptable, and you’re fully convinced it makes you less worthy of love, respect, care, and belonging. Despising what you see in the mirror every day, you join a gym in a burst of hate-fueled motivation. Desperate to lose the weight quickly, you show up every day, pushing your body past its limits, and cutting way back on calories. After about two weeks your body is exhausted, you’re starving all the time and have massive cravings, and when you step on the scale you haven’t lost as much as you feel like you “should” have, given how miserable you are.

So what happens? You dive face-first into a late night binge at Taco Bell, and wake up the next morning feeling so utterly defeated and worthless that you never go back to the gym again. “Why bother?” you think, furious with yourself for being too weak to succeed yet again.

Now let’s look at what happens if you accept your weight. You might think “this is the weight I am at right now, and it’s perfectly acceptable and understandable, and it doesn’t make me any less worthy of love, respect, acceptance, kindness, and belonging.” Along with that thought, you might notice that your moods, energy, and mental clarity have been a bit low, and that you get winded easily. Noticing this, and also accepting your current weight, you think “I am worthy of having better care, more energy, and a more active life.” You join a gym but decide to take it slow. You showing up twice a week to the gym for months, staying within a conservative level of effort until you’ve built a solid exercise habit, on top of making a few very subtle changes to your diet, like focusing on getting more vegetables and cutting out soda.

What happens? Over time you see results: better sleep, more positive moods, more energy, increased strength and endurance. Motivated by these results, you continue showing up and feeling good. Over the long term the composition of your body naturally changes, perhaps losing some fat and gaining some muscle. You enjoy these changes to your shape or size, but you also recognize that in and of themselves, they don’t make you any better, happier, or more worthy of love, acceptance, or belonging.

Do you see how much easier it is to make positive changes from a place of acceptance, rather than rejection? It may seem counter-intuitive, but resisting, resenting, shaming, and judging yourself for who you are in this moment is never going to lead to positive change.

So let’s talk about self-acceptance.

Our society teaches us generally what it means to be a good/normal person, and we are often shamed or punished for the ways in which we diverge from that definition.

While the specifics of what it means to be “good/normal” is different across cultures, races, religions, and genders, from an early age, we are constantly comparing what we notice inside of ourselves to the cultural definition of “good/normal.” When we find things inside ourselves that go against the messages we’ve received about what is “good/normal,” we tend to categorize it as “bad” and “unacceptable.” To avoid punishment or shame, we try to hide those things, banish them from our psyches, bury them deep down, or even deny their very existence in the hopes that they will eventually go away.

They don’t, of course.

The key to the parts of ourselves that we reject and deny is that we unconsciously (or consciously) believe they pose a threat– most often that threat is to connection itself. It feels like if anyone ever found out about that part of us, they would hate us, abandon us, reject us, or punish us.

Let’s take the example of a man, who is brought up with the message that a good/normal man is masculine, stoic, self-sacrificing, and silent. This man might find within himself bits of sensitivity, weakness, fear, emotions, and insecurity, and decide that in order to keep his status and connections safe, he must push all of those bits of himself down into oblivion, and deny their existence forever. Those parts of himself might become so loathsome to him, so dangerous and disgusting, that he finds himself resenting anyone else, male or female, who displays these traits, and find himself drawn to hyper-masculinity in the form of violence, porn, and an obsessive need to look big, strong, and powerful.

A woman on the other hand might get the message that in order to be “good” she must be small, delicate, passive, feminine, and selfless. Afraid of all the non-small, non-passive parts of her that she discovers inside, she becomes terrified that her very existence poses a threat to connection and belonging. She takes all of her aggression and “selfishness” (aka her strong sense of self and boundaries) and stuff them down out of reach, along with her needs, desires, intuition, anger, sexuality, and voice. She skates down the middle, careful to be enough of something, but never too much. Confident, but not too confident. Funny, but not too funny. Successful, but not too successful.

It’s not only cultural messages which teach us to reject parts of ourselves, either.

Many of us have specific memories of being shamed for something about our personalities, behavior, or bodies which we tagged forever as “unacceptable.”  Maybe your sister always called you dumb, or your dad used to comment on your unladylike manners or your mom worried about your weight. Whatever it was, these moments land in our brains as red flags for disconnection, letting us know that something about who we are is dangerous and we must stay on high alert to fight it off.

Self-acceptance isn’t easy. But it is absolutely a requirement for healing body image and walking around with an unconditional sense of self-worth.

If you still carry shame for any part of who you are– whether it’s about the kind of sex you fantasize about, or how much you want out of life, or how hungry you are for intimacy or attention, or how unkind you can be in your own mind– you will always need an outlet for that self-rejection.

Your body will always be a convenient location for your self-hatred, offering a tidy distraction and protection from the truth of your own hatred.

Think of it like this: all the parts of yourself that you reject get locked away in a corner of the deep dark basement of your psyche and treated like garbage with no food, no light, no human contact for years.

You, (the You who lives on the 5th floor of your psyche, with sun streaming through your windows enjoying the view and getting on with your life) rarely think about the basement. You’re far too busy with work and family and relationships and hobbies and routines and life.

So you carry on, happy-ish, thinking you did the right thing by locking those parts of yourself in the basement.

But two terrible things happen.

The first is that you are desperately lonely, and always feel like something is missing. People who meet you and don’t like you make you feel worse, because you’re paranoid that they suspect, or can tell, about the parts of yourself you have banished to the basement, and you live in fear that they know and already hate you.

People who meet you and like you make you feel guilty, because you know you’re pulling the wool over their eyes, and that they would despise you if they ever knew the truth of who you really are.

You meet people all day, unable to fully connect with any of them, no matter how they treat you, because you are constantly distracted by guarding your secrets, and are never able to be fully authentic anyway, because you have far too much to hide and protect.

The second is that sometimes you are there happily working on the fifth floor and you think everything is fine, when you suddenly hear screaming coming from the basement: blood-curdling, primal raging enemy-screams.

One might call these moments shame spirals, “imposter syndrome,” anxiety/depression, self-loathing, beating yourself up, or bad body image days. They arise when you remember that these severed parts of yourself (fueled with rage and hatred for having been chained up in the dark for so long) exist, which means that you are inherently a monster.

Plus, occasionally, one or more of your basement captives will break loose and take over the whole building with extraordinary violence in vengeance for the war you have waged against them, leading to exquisite levels of self-sabotage and out-of-control bad decision-making.

Self-acceptance is about recognizing that we all have these parts of ourselves, that they’re normal and natural, and that (if you don’t wage war on them first) they’re not dangerous.

We all have flaws. We all have the capacity for unkindness, gross habits, and weird shit that we like and want and do and are. These parts of ourselves do not make us lessworthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Self-acceptance is about letting those parts of ourselves out of the basement, raising the white flag of peace, and gently integrating them into our sense of self.

What happens when you do this is that you restore yourself to psychic wholeness, and stop being afraid all the time. When you stop hiding and protecting your secrets, you can connect with people more fully– so the feelings of loneliness and isolation cease, and those moments of “I am worthless garbage” ease up.

Don’t get me wrong. Self-acceptance takes courage, patience, compassion, and tons of self-examination. But it’s worth it, because on the other side of self-acceptance you actually have access to unconditional body love, confidence, wholeness, aliveness, and a deep feeling of unshakeable, unconditional self-worth.

The post The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2UNzf3o

[johnclapperne]

The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image

The Importance of Self-Acceptance.

“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ― Lori Deschene

In order to unconditionally love your body, you’ll need to acknowledge and accept your whole inner self. Literally all of it, including the parts that you currently consider completely fucking unacceptable.

It’s a tall order, I know.

Accepting isn’t the same as loving, though. Accepting just means you acknowledge the reality and existence of everything about who you are with open arms and compassion, and without resistance.

It’s worth noting here that accepting something about yourself isn’t the same thing as giving up on self-improvement, or resigning to never changing it. Again, it’s just acknowledging that this part of yourself exists, and more importantly, that this part of yourself doesn’t make you any less worthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Most people fall into the trap of thinking that the only appropriate way to meet a perceived “flaw” is with rejection, resentment, resistance, and judgement. The hope is that by not accepting the truth of who they are, they will “motivate” themselves to change. Sadly, the exact opposite tends to be true.

Changing something about yourself is actually extremely difficult when you reject and condemn it. Likewise, it’s pretty damn easy when you’ve truly accepted it, and recognize that it’s existence doesn’t make you any less worthy of connection.

Let’s use weight loss as an example.

Let’s say you hate the weight you’re at right now, you consider it completely unacceptable, and you’re fully convinced it makes you less worthy of love, respect, care, and belonging. Despising what you see in the mirror every day, you join a gym in a burst of hate-fueled motivation. Desperate to lose the weight quickly, you show up every day, pushing your body past its limits, and cutting way back on calories. After about two weeks your body is exhausted, you’re starving all the time and have massive cravings, and when you step on the scale you haven’t lost as much as you feel like you “should” have, given how miserable you are.

So what happens? You dive face-first into a late night binge at Taco Bell, and wake up the next morning feeling so utterly defeated and worthless that you never go back to the gym again. “Why bother?” you think, furious with yourself for being too weak to succeed yet again.

Now let’s look at what happens if you accept your weight. You might think “this is the weight I am at right now, and it’s perfectly acceptable and understandable, and it doesn’t make me any less worthy of love, respect, acceptance, kindness, and belonging.” Along with that thought, you might notice that your moods, energy, and mental clarity have been a bit low, and that you get winded easily. Noticing this, and also accepting your current weight, you think “I am worthy of having better care, more energy, and a more active life.” You join a gym but decide to take it slow. You showing up twice a week to the gym for months, staying within a conservative level of effort until you’ve built a solid exercise habit, on top of making a few very subtle changes to your diet, like focusing on getting more vegetables and cutting out soda.

What happens? Over time you see results: better sleep, more positive moods, more energy, increased strength and endurance. Motivated by these results, you continue showing up and feeling good. Over the long term the composition of your body naturally changes, perhaps losing some fat and gaining some muscle. You enjoy these changes to your shape or size, but you also recognize that in and of themselves, they don’t make you any better, happier, or more worthy of love, acceptance, or belonging.

Do you see how much easier it is to make positive changes from a place of acceptance, rather than rejection? It may seem counter-intuitive, but resisting, resenting, shaming, and judging yourself for who you are in this moment is never going to lead to positive change.

So let’s talk about self-acceptance.

Our society teaches us generally what it means to be a good/normal person, and we are often shamed or punished for the ways in which we diverge from that definition.

While the specifics of what it means to be “good/normal” is different across cultures, races, religions, and genders, from an early age, we are constantly comparing what we notice inside of ourselves to the cultural definition of “good/normal.” When we find things inside ourselves that go against the messages we’ve received about what is “good/normal,” we tend to categorize it as “bad” and “unacceptable.” To avoid punishment or shame, we try to hide those things, banish them from our psyches, bury them deep down, or even deny their very existence in the hopes that they will eventually go away.

They don’t, of course.

The key to the parts of ourselves that we reject and deny is that we unconsciously (or consciously) believe they pose a threat– most often that threat is to connection itself. It feels like if anyone ever found out about that part of us, they would hate us, abandon us, reject us, or punish us.

Let’s take the example of a man, who is brought up with the message that a good/normal man is masculine, stoic, self-sacrificing, and silent. This man might find within himself bits of sensitivity, weakness, fear, emotions, and insecurity, and decide that in order to keep his status and connections safe, he must push all of those bits of himself down into oblivion, and deny their existence forever. Those parts of himself might become so loathsome to him, so dangerous and disgusting, that he finds himself resenting anyone else, male or female, who displays these traits, and find himself drawn to hyper-masculinity in the form of violence, porn, and an obsessive need to look big, strong, and powerful.

A woman on the other hand might get the message that in order to be “good” she must be small, delicate, passive, feminine, and selfless. Afraid of all the non-small, non-passive parts of her that she discovers inside, she becomes terrified that her very existence poses a threat to connection and belonging. She takes all of her aggression and “selfishness” (aka her strong sense of self and boundaries) and stuff them down out of reach, along with her needs, desires, intuition, anger, sexuality, and voice. She skates down the middle, careful to be enough of something, but never too much. Confident, but not too confident. Funny, but not too funny. Successful, but not too successful.

It’s not only cultural messages which teach us to reject parts of ourselves, either.

Many of us have specific memories of being shamed for something about our personalities, behavior, or bodies which we tagged forever as “unacceptable.”  Maybe your sister always called you dumb, or your dad used to comment on your unladylike manners or your mom worried about your weight. Whatever it was, these moments land in our brains as red flags for disconnection, letting us know that something about who we are is dangerous and we must stay on high alert to fight it off.

Self-acceptance isn’t easy. But it is absolutely a requirement for healing body image and walking around with an unconditional sense of self-worth.

If you still carry shame for any part of who you are– whether it’s about the kind of sex you fantasize about, or how much you want out of life, or how hungry you are for intimacy or attention, or how unkind you can be in your own mind– you will always need an outlet for that self-rejection.

Your body will always be a convenient location for your self-hatred, offering a tidy distraction and protection from the truth of your own hatred.

Think of it like this: all the parts of yourself that you reject get locked away in a corner of the deep dark basement of your psyche and treated like garbage with no food, no light, no human contact for years.

You, (the You who lives on the 5th floor of your psyche, with sun streaming through your windows enjoying the view and getting on with your life) rarely think about the basement. You’re far too busy with work and family and relationships and hobbies and routines and life.

So you carry on, happy-ish, thinking you did the right thing by locking those parts of yourself in the basement.

But two terrible things happen.

The first is that you are desperately lonely, and always feel like something is missing. People who meet you and don’t like you make you feel worse, because you’re paranoid that they suspect, or can tell, about the parts of yourself you have banished to the basement, and you live in fear that they know and already hate you.

People who meet you and like you make you feel guilty, because you know you’re pulling the wool over their eyes, and that they would despise you if they ever knew the truth of who you really are.

You meet people all day, unable to fully connect with any of them, no matter how they treat you, because you are constantly distracted by guarding your secrets, and are never able to be fully authentic anyway, because you have far too much to hide and protect.

The second is that sometimes you are there happily working on the fifth floor and you think everything is fine, when you suddenly hear screaming coming from the basement: blood-curdling, primal raging enemy-screams.

One might call these moments shame spirals, “imposter syndrome,” anxiety/depression, self-loathing, beating yourself up, or bad body image days. They arise when you remember that these severed parts of yourself (fueled with rage and hatred for having been chained up in the dark for so long) exist, which means that you are inherently a monster.

Plus, occasionally, one or more of your basement captives will break loose and take over the whole building with extraordinary violence in vengeance for the war you have waged against them, leading to exquisite levels of self-sabotage and out-of-control bad decision-making.

Self-acceptance is about recognizing that we all have these parts of ourselves, that they’re normal and natural, and that (if you don’t wage war on them first) they’re not dangerous.

We all have flaws. We all have the capacity for unkindness, gross habits, and weird shit that we like and want and do and are. These parts of ourselves do not make us lessworthy of love, connection, or belonging.

Self-acceptance is about letting those parts of ourselves out of the basement, raising the white flag of peace, and gently integrating them into our sense of self.

What happens when you do this is that you restore yourself to psychic wholeness, and stop being afraid all the time. When you stop hiding and protecting your secrets, you can connect with people more fully– so the feelings of loneliness and isolation cease, and those moments of “I am worthless garbage” ease up.

Don’t get me wrong. Self-acceptance takes courage, patience, compassion, and tons of self-examination. But it’s worth it, because on the other side of self-acceptance you actually have access to unconditional body love, confidence, wholeness, aliveness, and a deep feeling of unshakeable, unconditional self-worth.

The post The Importance of Self-Acceptance on Body Image appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2UNzf3o

[paradoxnbstuff]

okay so i need to talk about this for a minute

because usually i can find some shit about this on youtube or a transition blog somewhere but i cant for some reason this time? and its one of those difficult things to think about that I’ve been putting off for like years. so. anyways. top surgery stuff.

so first of all I have this habit of mine that’s taken a while and lot of shit to notice. it was probably a left over from growing up with my abusive dad and trying to survive that. but basically I’m very good at putting something aside in my head and so thoroughly convincing myself it’s not something that’s bugging me (subconsciously) that when it comes time to actually think about it I legitimately cannot tell how I feel about it. I’m talking about sitting and thinking about it for hours, plus research, and actively taking stock of my reactions as they happen to try to just. logically deduce what’s actually going on in my brain based on physical symptoms of emotional reactions I can’t actually feel. and obviously anyone can see how that would be incredibly useful in a situation like my parents where I had no choice in the matter for 18 years, and i could either constantly wallow in misery and agony and hurt and stress and confusion and terror at just living in my house 24/7, or i could section it off. and create like. a new baseline for myself. ex my baseline became that state and then went up or down based on negative or ‘positive’ things that happened from that baseline. looking at it objectively it was all obviously still horrible and stressful and traumatizing but i wouldn’t have been able to get through it if I was consciously aware of that the whole time. So that’s where that developed.

But weird backstory aside this has carried over to certain things in my life on my own since I moved out too. It’s why it took me so long to figure out gender shit and why I still haven’t figured out my sexuality even though I don’t lack the vocabulary or even really experience to. it’s affected my relationships with people, but I’ve been practically religious about trying to make sure I identify it when it happens and dedicating a lot of time and thought to unraveling whatever’s going on and stopping it, because fuck that I refuse to let it mess with the people I care about. There’s certain markers but it’s not like most things where you experience negative emotions and there’s a natural pathway from point a to point b. the markers are me having to stop and look at the past few months or longer and pick out patterns of times when i acted illogically in similar way, and cross ref it to see if it came with a feeling of abstractness where i couldn’t identify what emotions i was feeling. but like. its like trying to identify nothing. anger or happiness or w/e is easy like hey im feeling that but trying to notice when you’re feeling nothing or something unquantifiable? much fucking harder. and the trigger for me to start wondering if something is going on is when it starts to impact my quality of life negatively in some way. so. a really fucking stupidly difficult logical approach to untangle some very complicated emotions. which is sadly necessary.

so that’s the method I use to realize when this is happening. hasn’t really gotten any easier but i can do it i guess. and this is what’s happening now with me and top surgery? it happened with the decision to start testosterone, (’but im happy with how i look and sound!’ god no ur not u fucking disaster ur brain just didn’t want you to be miserable 24/7 and tricked you into thinking u were) and i think it’s the same thing with this. but i don’t. know??? for sure???? so I’m having to figure out this incredibly difficult and emotional decision with only purely factual patterns to go on and my emotions, which im not sure are fake or not, plaguing me every step of the way. so im just gonna fucking write em down and hope it helps.

fact 1: i never wear a bra. ever. it’s always either a binder or binder-adjacent like a sports bra. it’s been like that for 3 ish years now and it’s not stopping any time soon. i’m violently uncomfortable wearing a bra. 

fact 2: i dont like touching my chest or nipples. (tmi ish warning w/e) when I’m having sexual relations with another person im again, violently uncomfortable with the other person touching my chest. i will repeatedly redirect or say no if they start to with absolutely no doubt about it.

fact 3: i don’t like wearing tight clothing if i can’t bind. when I go to the gym and work out I wear a sports bra and wearing tshirts that show that fuckin. again feel nearly ill.

fact 4: i don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror? like. I have/had a lot of dysphoria about my body, specifically my hips and the kinda hourglass dip in between ribs and hips and the way e gives fat distribution around the upper hips around the waist and thighs and butt. that’s mostly gone now due to a combination of T and working out, but I still don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror. that’s possibly because I’m literally like 3/4 of an A cup at max but. yknow. this is also one of those things that is COMPLETELY based on feelings. and it feels suspiciously like when I’m trying to gauge my reaction and get ‘yeah I feel neutral about this actually’ but is really just very skillful repression. and I can’t tell. so. that’s great. it is a subjective fact, as opposed to the previous 3. 

fact 5: if i stretch my arms up it looks like i have a flat chest (bc i i have like no boobs to begin with) and the reaction I get to that is a definite. reaction. it’s an adrenaline based one. but another issue i’m working on is i can’t tell the difference between happy excited adrenaline and panic adrenaline and therefore when i feel happy excited about something i start fear panicking instead and it sucks but yknow. so I get an adrenaline thrill. that I can’t identify as fear or excitement. so that’s. there? fuck

fact 6: i’m not male. I figured that out a long time ago but it’s become important again recently that I am n o t a trans man. I’m solidly nonbinary. T was and is the right decision for me. So is building muscle. So is my decision now to grow out my hair again. So is my clothing that is decidedly not masculine fairly often and my makeup (that can be either to help with the masc or just to make me feel hot, or feminine sometimes). But this is something that’s....like. It would make me look a lot more masculine. like a lot. like it would be looking in the mirror and seeing that (without the big scars you see a lot underneath, i wouldn’t have that) and I don’t know if that’s something I want. but at the same time, that’s what I want to look like in clothes. I don’t fucking know.

fact 7: i know there’s probably some underlying fear in there of like societally ingrained disgust for non-cis bodies. and I know for a fact I’m attractive as a feminine person. and doing this means that I’m committing myself to a permanent non-cis state. I’m in no way saying there’s anything actually wrong with that, I’m saying that I know there’s things in the way I’ve been raised that inherently shy away from that still. It’s not something I want and it’s something I have to deal with but it probably is playing a part in my fear in this.

fact 8: currently, my main reason for tentatively starting the application process is my health. I love being active and healthy and exercising and I know that binding long term hurts your ribs and lungs, and I also know that I’m not going to stop binding any time soon if I don’t have top surgery. And getting it just for health reasons is a perfectly valid reason to do it. And if I am actually neutral about my chest and not just tricking myself? I’m totally happy with this being the deciding factor.  

anyways. yeah. the problem with dismantling a mental block you’ve set up for yourself is it involves actively unlocking self hatred and pain that you can’t put back in the box once you’ve opened it until it’s dealt with. so there isn’t a ton of incentive to. ngl it didn’t happen with testosterone fully until after I’d been on it for a few months and realized how fucking desperately I needed this to be happening. but I don’t think that’s how I want it to go with top surgery. I want to know before I go through with it what I’m feeling and what I want. and it is. VERY fucking difficult. god. yeah. anyways. that’s where I’m at. thanks for coming to my ted talk.