#because they only know autism externally and by how it impacts others

[foxmulderautism]

that flavour of characters where it’s like you are clearly displaying autistic tendencies to me but i am so glad that the writers did not intend for that and write you with autism in mind because they would have handled it horribly and ruined the fun vibe

[dissociacrip]

i'm gonna spare the op of that post my adderall-fueled ranting but tbqh i wouldn't say being disabled affects how i perceive my gender identity so much as its impacted how other people gender me, and then that informs my perception of my gender identity. it's not purely an internal thing.

autism and ADHD, for example, are associated with things like poor volume control and generally "boisterous" behavior (though not every person with these conditions exhibit these behaviors, of course.) a lot of behaviors i exhibited as a child (and still do today) in relation to being autistic and having ADHD are ones that are considered "masculine" and this is part of the reason that i've been read and i'm still often read as not-female or at least not feminine/girly/womanly by my peers. and that is something that has definitely affected my gender identity (aside from the fact i have various bodily features that are conventionally understood as "masculine.")

that's just scratching the surface though. i've seen this mentioned sometimes on here before but not often. there are some disabilities that i would say are very much gendered while others are kind of degendered instead (or in addition to), in that people who are disabled in certain ways are pushed out of womanhood or manhood or "acceptable" understandings of gender by external forces for a variety of reasons related to their disabilities.

intellectual disability. other (neuro)developmental conditions. certain intersex variations that lead to disability. other conditions that affect the structure or functioning of the sex organs (because gender is also wrapped up in one's ability to sufficiently "perform" heterosexuality, which is also wrapped up in normative ideas about how to perform intercourse.) reliance on mobility aids. limb differences and other structural differences. paralysis.

that's not even close to a complete list.

Because I'm a wheelchair user, people see me as incapable of having a gender identity, so often they will correctly avoid using gendered language or pronouns to refer to me, but it's not because they're recognizing and respecting my identity as a nonbinary person — it's because they think my wheelchair automatically makes me genderless. It's not misgendering as such, but it's degendering, and it's a different kind of harmful and it's part of a larger system of ableism that considers me less of a person because I'm disabled and a wheelchair user.

( "Here's What Transgender People With Disabilities Want You To Know," Buzzfeed )

idk where i'm going with this. generally the ways in which disability impacts the way someone is gendered or someone's gender identity are super complex and difficult to map out + something that is very wrapped up in the way external forces affect us in relation to gender.

there's a multitude of ways to have a "wrong" body (or "wrong" behavior in terms of how behaviors are gendered, which is more often the case when we're talking about psychiatric disability) and both womanhood and manhood are wrapped up in normative ideas about bodies, bodily functioning, and what someone does with their body. perceived deviations from normative ideas about those things irt disability are not only punished on the basis of being a "failed" person (not being abled) but often also being a "failed" woman/man.

[equalperson]

being autistic and avoidant

i've noticed that both my avoidant personality and my autistic neurology impact each other greatly. still, even though it's one of the more frequent personality diagnoses alongside autism, i don't really see anyone talk about what being an avoidant autistic is like.

that being said, here are a few ways i notice they interact in my personal experience:

cognitive empathy

a major part of both disabilities are their impacts on cognitive empathy. autism often causes people to avoid assuming others' thoughts and feelings, while avoidants tend to assume these feelings are negative and personal.

before i developed my avoidant personality, i fell into the latter category. people could be blatantly unhappy and i'd just...assume things were fine.

at this point, however, my avoidant perspective-taking has definitely become my main thought process. i always feel like people hate me or what i'm doing or just generally aren't in the mood to deal with me.

i wouldn't say that i "have cognitive empathy" now, but moreso that i'm too focused on avoiding rejection to not be constantly assume the worst.

self-esteem

another part of avoidant personality is the idea that you're socially inept, regardless of evidence. being autistic complicates this since--by definition--all autistic people would be considered "socially inept" by society.

this makes it difficult to know when autistic self-awareness ends and avoidant self-deprecation begins. am i incapable of [social thing] because i'm autistic, or because i simply don't believe i am?

at points, i've questioned my autism due to this. like, maybe i'm just exaggerating; i've seen allistic avoidants mistake it for autism before, as well.

however, others' perspectives and my significant restrictive/repetitive behavior makes it clear that it's not just me.

self-direction

my ability to manage myself is impacted by both my autism and my avoidance.

on the one hand, autism gives me executive dysfunction, autistic inertia, and rituals that are rigid to the point of self-sabotage.

but on the other hand, being avoidant makes me too self-conscious to take care of myself easily, namely considering that i don't live alone, thus am in a constant state of social vigilance.

for example, i've yet to learn how to cook.

one issue is that i've gotten so used to the routine of having food made for me that it's triggering to be suddenly encouraged to change, but another is that i'm afraid of the attention taking any initiative would bring.

i don't believe i'd be shamed for it, but being avoidant makes any attention feel intimidating to me; it's not purely a fear of criticism, but generally a fear of recognition (which is ironic considering that i'm also a narcissist, making me very attention-seeking, as well).

social skills

not only does being avoidant impact how i think of my social abilities, but also how i utilize them.

being alexithymic, it can be hard to understand even my own motivations in things. at points, i can't tell if i'm being quote/unquote "socially inept" because i can't understand the situation or because i simply don't want to make any moves.

for example, i almost never make eye contact with others. i originally thought of this as part of my autism, but i honestly can't tell if it's that or my avoidant personality.

on the one hand, eye contact is sincerely overwhelming, but on the other, i can easily do it with animals, fictional characters, and my own reflection. i also made eye contact pre-avoidance. maybe i'm simply too afraid of the intimacy, not actually sensory-sensitive to it?

in other situations, it can be a mixture of both autism and avoidance.

for example, i tend to avoid initiating conversations. i don't want to draw attention to myself or risk rejection, but i also genuinely don't know how i'm expected to start a conversation at all.

external perceptions

i've been told that my social anxiety is obvious, but not my autism. if most people knew what avoidant personality was, i assume i'd probably be recognized as outright avoidant very easily.

pretty much everyone considers me withdrawn in some way. i've been called quiet, indecisive, easy (as in "passive"), reserved, and various similar words.

in some cases, this works in my favor. there have been situations where people have treated me even friendlier than they do others because they see me as fragile.

in many other cases, this works against me; people avoid me because i'm too withdrawn for their tastes. this enables my avoidant behavior, as it affirms--and partially caused--my belief that no one could actually want to be around me.

in other cases, people don't see me as anxious, but just emotionally cold. people have sometimes questioned if i hated them or was angry with them due to my behavior. however, this is typically due to explicitly autistic behavior rather than anything avoidant.

apparently, people also see me as somewhat eccentric. my mom described it once as "the many quirks of ian." i'm not fully aware what these quirks are, but they're there.

[perplexingluciddreams]

An exploration of gender as a nonverbal autistic

This is going to be an attempt at expressing my feelings about my own gender and queerness, as a nonverbal autistic with language difficulties, low awareness of the world around me, barely any sense of self, and so many other things that affect my ability to understand and be aware of the concept of gender and sexuality to begin with.

I tried to write this like a properly structured essay, but because my thoughts are so disorganised in general (and I have so many thoughts on this topic), I couldn’t manage that. So, I have decided to present this as if it is a collection of journal entries; that is basically what this is, in truth! You will just have to experience the disorganisation in a similar way to how I experience my own mind. The most organising I was able to do was split it up into some categories, to make it slightly easier for you, reading this. Some things that I wrote could fit into more than one category, but this is how I chose to divide it up.

I have written a lot about the words I use to describe the way I feel, how I choose those words, and how that has changed over time. My delays in certain areas of development, and the other ways my various disabilities affect me, have a significant impact on the ways I have come to understand my gender identity and the internal (and partially external) process I went through to get to where I am now.

I have no doubt that things will continue to shift and change and as a result, the way I define myself in different contexts will also change. This is just my first attempt at getting a lot of this out of my brain and into words, for other people to read.

I wrote this is many fragments, so it doesn’t flow or connect, and there may be some repetition. Each paragraph may have been written at a completely different time, and therefore doesn’t relate to the last paragraph, or the next. Some of this is just stand-alone statements, some is longer examinations of my feelings. But all of it is true to my experience of the world and of queerness.

I have never been able to express the majority of this before, so I think it is pretty good for a first attempt!

**Note: I make a reference to having speech at a point in my life. I am nonverbal due to late autism regression, and grew up semiverbal with very unreliable speech, and language issues. I had very poor communication.**

Here we go!

I am inserting a “read more” here because this is very long. Really, very long.

Part 1 - The Words

I don't really think of myself as a man or a woman, or a boy or a girl. I have called myself a transsexual man before, simply because that is the clearest way to explain to someone where I'm coming from and where I'm headed. But I don't particularly like the word "man" to describe myself. I like the word boy, just because the word is nice. But that doesn't mean I am insistent on people calling me a boy. 

I choose the words I use for myself simply from what I like the sound or feel of the most. The last thing I want is to be boxed in, though. I only use labels as descriptors, to explain to other people - they are a tool to communicate something, not a set of limits and boundaries to put on myself.

I know a lot of people might read this and think "that sounds like nonbinary", but I don't use that word. Again, simply because I don't like the way it sounds or feels when i read/write/hear it. And yes, I suppose I do exist outside the conventional binary, but that would be the case regardless of whether I was transsexual or not, because of my autism. So that is not something that needs to be labeled in my opinion (for me personally). Because the conventional binary is not something that exists in my experience of the world.

I hate that there's one set of accepted terminology to label queerness - such a fluid and complex piece of identity - and that I am even more "other" if I choose to say that I AM female, I WAS a girl. I don't like the word transgender unless it is being used as a verb - transing gender. I like the word transsexual because it describes something I will DO (top surgery, eventually). And partly because of how it sounds and the pattern of typing it on a keyboard.

My gender is what I DO, not what I AM. Gender as a verb.

Socially, changing my name and pronouns is much more connected to my barely-there sense of self, and past trauma. I needed to start again, because I felt that my life had changed completely (and it *had*). I like he/him pronouns because they sound different to how i was always referred to growing up. And they simply sound nicer. 

Even though I don't understand most of the social stuff that comes with gender stuff, I still have positive and negative connections to certain gender-related things. And relating to the way I was raised - it still affects me, even though I can't grasp the complexity of how and why.

I enjoy the fact that I am fucking with gender, fucking with expectations. I am a female that is also a boy. I love the contradiction.

I still call myself female, because if people really mean it when they say "gender and sex is separate", then "female" does not mean "girl" or "woman".

Most words I used to describe myself as a child were put on me by other people. I used to repeat them over and over in my mind, as if to explain to myself that that's what I am. Especially my own name. I felt that if I just repeated it enough then maybe those words would stick and feel real. They never did. I don't know what words I would use to describe myself now, but I don't think I need to know. I'm just me. No words are needed for that.

When I just exist as myself in the world, words are barely relevant. My world is so sensory-based and rich in sensations that there's no point even trying to put words to it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with creating new words for things that already have words to describe them, language is constantly evolving and different people will have different experiences that they want to describe in different ways. However, I don't think it is useful to argue for stopping the usage of "outdated" terms, as there are always going to be people who prefer those terms. Not all people are going to agree on a word that they find most fitting or appropriate, even in one community.

I try my best to examine my feelings about myself and what causes a good reaction in me and what causes bad reaction in me. And then I use whatever words I have to try and explain it as best as I can.

Often the words I have are not enough and either I cannot communicate something at all, or I try and it is inaccurate and/or inadequate.

It is very difficult for me to put such abstract thoughts/concepts/feelings into words, I lack the language for that and often also the awareness - there is so many steps to communicating something for me. For example, most people have the automatic urge to communicate things, and know that option is always there. For me, it takes mental work to even remember other people exist and I am capable of interaction with them. And of course after that follows so much more work to do the actual communicating.

For years I thought of the words "transgender" and "transsexual" as off limits. "Those are the things I am not allowed to be".

A lot of words have shaky definitions and that makes it hard for me to even understand what they mean, never mind use them to describe myself.

I would often rather use a phrase, or a paragraph, to describe myself, rather than a singular word. I really don't want to be misunderstood. 

I think that the way I experience gender cannot be put into words, and it certainly can't be labeled with one thing. I'm just grateful to have the opportunity to even try and communicate these things, and to explore it openly in the first place. Because of course I would still explore it inside my own head, even if I didn't have the words or couldn't tell anybody - I was already doing that, before I had access to all this new language.

I know a lot of people don't like the word "tomboy", but since I was a kid I've always really liked it. It brings to mind a mental image of young girls (in a time when clothing for men and women was much more separated) dressing up in boys clothes, boys school uniform, and the feeling of freedom from that. I always wished people would call me a tomboy when I was a kid.

I had a feeling of "oh, that's what I want to be when I grow up", when I first learnt of what butch is. Even though I am not sure at all of my sexuality, because that relates to other people and I am never sure how I relate to other people, or if that’s even possible, especially in a romantic or sexual way.

The words I use will always be slightly "out of date", or "not right", because of the time it takes my brain to catch up with everything. I will never find words to properly describe myself in a way that feels fully correct. I live in a world of my own that doesn't need words, only the acknowledgement of a feeling inside my own head. However, that is not very useful when trying to communicate things to other people.

Some words just taste and sound like defiance.

Part 2 - My Physical Existence

With puberty, I had so much discomfort with the change in my body, not only because it felt as if I was developing wrong, but also because of age and developmental stage - I felt it was too early, I was not ready for that. Big changes are bad.

I do have dysphoria, but only really around my chest, and the way people refer to me (which is also complicated and related to trauma). And other than that, I don't care a lot about how I am viewed, as long as I feel free to express myself however I want.

Aside from my chest, I am comfortable being female. I like having a vulva (as much as it intrigues me about what having a penis is like), I don't want to change that about my body. I don't mind having a uterus (apart from menstruation, which is not fun, but it's not the worst thing ever and it doesn't make me feel overly dysphoric).

I recognise that I have a physical form. I did have to develop the awareness of that, but I do not see that as ME. I am just a floating mass of thoughts and feelings and experiences.

My body was made for me, it wasn't made wrong. There are things I need to change about this body to make it more comfortable to exist in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was made wrong to begin with, despite feeling that way sometimes.

Disabled bodies inherently break the rules.

Many times I have wondered, perhaps, if my chest were much smaller, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. The main thing I struggle with due to my very large chest, is the physical discomfort. It aggravates my sensory issues in a massive way, it causes back and rib pain from the weight and pressure. The ways that having a large chest increases symptoms of my disabilities are the biggest reason for needing top surgery. Gender wise, I think I would be unbothered by a more “neutral” body, where I could easily forget about my birth sex. If/when I get top surgery, I will be removing my entire chest - the end result being a flat chest - however if I naturally had very small breasts I wonder whether I would pursue top surgery at all. I’m not sure of the answer to this, I can’t imagine hypothetical situations well, but it’s something I think about often.

I find relief in having physical reminders that it is different now (to when I was a child) and I won't get hurt again, I am safe now. I now have a buzzcut that I touch every time I am scared and remember it is not like when my hair was long, not anymore.

Sensory issues and physical limitations affect my physical appearance. And, my mannerisms are affected. I cannot look how I WANT to look. How I WISH I looked. As a result, my perception of myself and my external appearance, are even further divided. My generally low awareness and weak sense of self comes into play here as well. There is such a disconnect.

Part 3 - Awareness and Understanding

I can't stick labels on myself because in order to do that, I need to perceive myself as a person first. If other people want to use certain words to describe the way I am and the way I try to find joy and comfort in this confusing and scary world, that's absolutely fine by me - words are important and helpful and useful. But I don't know enough about the character that other people see and perceive, to say those things about "me".

I don't understand the concept of gender at all really. For me being trans is just about having more of the things that make me happier and more comfortable. I don't know what it means to BE a boy, versus being a girl - just that, out of the two, I would much rather be a boy. It is complicated, having such strong feelings towards and/or against things that I barely grasp the concept of.

My (lack of) understanding of gender and awareness of the world and myself definitely impact the way I define my identity. I would like to say that I am not bothered about labels much. That, to me the human experience is too complex and varied and colourful to be fit into black and white labels, I am just somewhere on the spectrum of human, but as descriptors they can be useful. And all of that is true, however, I do have intense preferences on which words I and others use to refer to me, even if I don’t at all understand why. Those preferences have shifted over time, as well, which sparks a period of questioning and examination, every time I hear someone use a word I previously preferred and find myself physically recoiling from the discomfort.

I cannot understand social constructs such as gender and gender roles. It just add to the confusion that surrounds my brain every day of my life.

If someone views me as a woman (or a girl), nowadays I am okay with that. It definitely would have bothered younger me, because I couldn't yet wrap my head around the complexity and fluidity of identity, and how it can't always be described by words with strict definitions. But as long as people use the name I chose for myself, and refer to me in the the way I ask, I am okay with any assumptions they may make about me based on my outward appearance. Because it's me, and how I define my own identity, that matters. Not how I look to other people. And my appearance is not something I have much control over at all, anyway. The first thing people notice about me is that I’m disabled.

Part 4 - Growing Up

The stages to breaking down my identity enough to identify it as a trans experience, for me, were this. First, it was necessary to understand what gender and sex is, and that there’s a difference between the two. Then, to understand social roles assigned to male and female that create "girl" and "boy" expectations. Thirdly, to have enough awareness of myself and understand my individual experience (and be able to compare my experience to others’) enough to figure out how I feel about gender. Lastly, to finally get communication skills and the control over my life to be able to TELL anyone. This last step is a work in progress!

The way I see it, I was by default a girl when I was younger. Because I had no control then, and that's what was assigned to me. I really couldn't say what I wanted almost at all until I was about 16 years old. And one of the first complex things I finally could communicate (at a very basic level, just scraping the surface) was the gender stuff. I attempted this a lot of times before 16 but I simply didn’t have the language, the understanding, the awareness, the communication skills, etc. to get my point across. The first time I tried to tell another person about experiencing queerness, I only had the words “gay” and “lesbian” to use. I knew that these were not right, but that was all I had. The only words I could use were ones I had read or heard, from other people, and that greatly, greatly limited my ability to express my unique internal experiences. Instead of trying to find other words, I instead became very insistent upon being gay/lesbian, only because I knew it was more than that.

I have a lot of memories of scary experiences where my unreliable speech took over and blurted out scripts (delayed echolalia) about being queer (using words I wouldn’t choose), simply because I was trying to learn and understand my feelings about queerness better with watching/reading media from other people. And that lead to ridicule and more exposure than I was ready for or wanted. I didn’t want other people to know, at that stage. I wasn’t done with the processing, and I needed it to stay internal. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

I was one of those people where it was always obvious I am queer, or at least “different” in just about every respect. I have never had a choice to hide it. I mourn the fact that I was never allowed the chance to inform other people of this part of my identity in my own time, with my own words. I am grateful that I even have the privilege of writing this, but there is a reason that there’s so much to write here in one go. There is so much I haven’t had the ability to say at all, until now, and even more that I haven’t had the chance to say right.

Sometimes I have the feeling that, even in the queer community, with the accepted labels and identities, I don't fit. It makes me sad sometimes, that I couldn't fit an accepted “role” or label. I have come to an understanding that that is not what being queer is about at all, which helps. I think part of the reason this upsets me, is because I am so disabled that I will never “fit” in any real queer space with other real queer people. I am left outside, watching from the edges. I am outside of everything. 

But - It comforts me that there have always been people like me, just existing in the world. We have always been here. When I was younger and had all these thoughts and feelings about gender that I didn't understand yet, had no context for, couldn't express and didn't have proof of anyone else who had the same experience - it comforted me to think "if i am feeling this, then statistically another human at some point in time must've felt the same way".

When I was younger I used to believe - queer is what people say when they mean "dirty" and "wrong". It’s what people say when they mean something worse but don't have a word for it.

My identity of being trans is simply my identity of being me.

When I think about "passing" and wishing things to be easier for me, I don't think "I wish I passed as a boy", I find myself wishing I was just a girl, and then my life would be so much less complicated. But, of course, it will always be complicated for me, because of how others perceive my autism first, before anything else. I feel I struggle to be seen as a whole human with a complex human experience, because to so many people I am just my autism. Then also lacking of awareness of gender and only knowing my own feelings - even if I was a girl, I would still have this difficulty! - but still, in this situation, I think "I wish I didn't have these feelings to begin with". I think that shows it is more about the difficulty of coping, rather than other people's view and opinion based on my appearance and outward expression.

When using words to refer to my younger self, those experiences and the way they were labeled and explained at the time does not cease to exist just because I choose to use different words for my present-day self. I am more accepting of this now, I used to really struggle with the fact that it had changed over time and my black-and-white thinking of “one or the other is true”, made it very challenging.

When I was younger, the only way I knew how to make everything “wrong” with me (autism, physical disabilities, queerness, lack of faith in God, etc.) an understandable concept, was to come up with the overall explanation that “my brain is broken”. I just thought that must be the only answer. It was the only way I could process how many things I thought were completely and utterly wrong about me.

It feels like two facts colliding when I see my birth name, and it makes my brain hurt and my understanding of the world shatter.

Part 5 - The Choice

When people misgender me, it is more upsetting to me that people ignore my choice than that they perceive me "wrong" or make the wrong assumption. I actually don’t mind assumptions much, if someone looks at me and thinks I’m a woman that’s okay with me nowadays - I understand that I appear female, because I am, and a lot of people connect female with woman (or girl, as I am often also assumed to be quite young). But I also can easily forget that someone might not know my pronouns straight away, simply because of struggles with theory of mind - I forget that other people don't automatically know what I know, that they can't read my mind.

It is upsetting only because my choice is not being respected or understood or seen, from my brain’s point of view. Having the ability and opportunity to choose the way I am addressed, the way I identify, the way I talk about myself and want others to talk about me, is incredibly valuable to me. For so long I have only had other people’s words, both for them to freely put onto me, and to use in my laboured attempts at communication. Attempting to grab onto the closest words to my true meaning and piecing them together like jigsaw pieces from different puzzles that don’t quite fit.

Now that I can write something like this, with so many words that are mostly my own, to have someone go against that (whether it is intentional or not - it doesn’t change things because of my low theory of mind, I can’t think from another’s perspective and understand that they don’t know what I know) is spirit breaking.

A lot of the parts of my transition can be (partially) attributed to different things, different reasons. I changed my name partly because I had no connection to my birth name, and struggled to remember to respond to it. It also reminded me of bad memories that I don’t want to relive every day. Having a new name was part of a necessary process of changing every part of my life so it never feels the same way it used to - at least, not in the ways that I can control. I already wrote about how I need top surgery for reasons including but not limited to dysphoria, pain, sensory issues, and so on. I love having my hair buzzed (as much as I have the occasional urge to grow it), because it feels like me. It feel different to when I was younger, and it’s a physical reminder that I am safe now, every time I touch my head or catch a glance of myself in the mirror.

Technically, with these other reasons to attribute many parts of my transition to, I could choose not to identify the way I do. If I didn’t feel a strong connection to queerness, I don’t think I would spend so much time trying to sift through thoughts and feelings and experiences and memories and holding them up against different words to see how it fits. I have basically no awareness of gender outside of myself, I can’t figure out my sexuality because I don’t know how I can even relate to other people. I could put a mental block between me and this topic, and never call myself queer or trans or anything like that ever again.

But - I DO choose to collect these parts of me, and spend the time holding them up to the light and squinting at them from every direction, to come to align them with these words. That is my choice.

I am the same person I always have been, I just get to choose now. I have the power and control.

Thank you for reading, if you got to the end! I love to know that my words are seen by other people.

[mountain--bones]

On Being "Socially Nonhuman"

One thing I've been mulling over lately...

I love how acceptance of physical nonhumanity is increasing now. I think it's very positive, and especially for those who experience clinical zoanthropy - so much support to you creatures!

Personally, I don't feel physically nonhuman at all. Not even in a figurative sense. My physical humanity has been a big part of my life's narrative, for better or worse - I've had plenty of trouble with species dysphoria in the past, but my path to healing has always been to recognise the joys in being human-bodied even if it doesn't reflect what I really am.

But the consideration - "oh, well, am I physically nonhuman?" - led me to a different idea that is just... sticking with me now, and I wanted to share it in case any other nonhuman folks relate. And also just for the sake of sharing, I need to do that more!

I'm physically human, but my nonhumanity feels... externally impactful on a level where I feel like referring to it as an "identity" alone is maybe a bit minimising.

This is because, far as I can tell, I just don't... act or feel in the way humans do?

The best examples of this are all absences.

I'm asexual, in the specific sense where I don't feel sexual attraction or desire at all, and never have. I genuinely cannot comprehend those experiences. This is pretty impactful and isolating all on its own.

But even more jarring is that I don't feel love in any conventional way. And I don't mean "just" romantic love - I mean any love at all. I don't love my friends, I don't love my family, I don't love my pets. This probably sounds horrible, but it's not! I can feel affection.

What separates my affection from "love" is that it's non-selective - I don't bond with specific individuals. A more palatable way to put this might be to say that I love my cat, but I love the neighbour's cat I see out the window just as much. But that feels reductive, because selectivity is a key part of what defines "love"! Can it be "love" if you feel it for everyone, whether you know them personally or not? Not really! It's a different thing.

And the other thing I'd say I'm distinctly lacking is, uh... survival instinct? Whatever drive pushes people (and animals) to keep going even when times are hard, even when things are desperate, on the hope that they'll make it to the other side. I don't experience that and I don't understand it (though, genuinely, I do wish I did).

Other ways I'm behaviourally inhuman are a bit subtler and harder to define. The way I think kinda throws people for a loop a lot - there are things that seem naturally intuitive to me, that other people genuinely struggle with. It's not a brag cause there's other things that are absolutely the reverse, ahah!

I guess, I thought it could be explained by neurodivergence for a while, but it all seems to run so much deeper than autism and ADHD could account for.

I have to mask myself to appear human. I have to mask any time I'm around other people, no matter how much I trust them, because I know trust only goes so far and there's some things I experience and feel that - to most people - are so "out there" that they'd just sound unhealthy.

There are things that are a normal part of my life that would be radically weird for most folks. This means I have to hide parts of my candid experience of life just to avoid uncomfortable attention or concern.

I don't like attention! I'm eccentric even when masking. The best I can do is "acceptably weird".

Fact of the matter is, you just can't live a safe, reasonable life while being open about the fact that your normal experience of the world is as a quasi-deity who became trapped in a human body by accident, who remembers the beginnings of life on Earth, who can sense the spirits of plants and animals, who peers through the layers of reality, and sometimes reacts to things before they happen. These things are all normal for me - there's no way I can be genuinely honest about myself while also "being human".

What it adds up to is that I feel viscerally nonhuman in a way that has a profound impact on my external life - yet still, I'm physically human. I am keenly aware of how my human brain impacts my way of thinking, how my human hormones affect how I feel.

So I'm not physically nonhuman, but I'm... socially nonhuman?

If you take "social" to encompass things like emotions and viewpoints and such, as well as how you talk and act?

My nonhumanity is socially impactful, and that impacts the physical (insofar as it impacts how I act, how I feel, and how I engage with the world).

It's an identity, yes, but it's not... self-contained. I can't really pass as "a normal person who happens to be nonhuman".

I doubt I'm the only one who experiences something like this! And that's part of why I'm even putting this out there. I don't exactly expect (or need) "socially nonhuman" to catch on as a term, but I wanted to say that this is how I feel, and that others who feel this way are not alone.

It can seem like a very lonely existence, I suppose. I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable to express my genuine self around other people. Even online, I mask and hide. I would be seen differently if I didn't do that. Connection and belonging are fulfilling to me, and I value them too much to lose them just for the sake of being honest about stuff that most people wouldn't understand anyway!

Still, I don't really regret being nonhuman in this way. This is just who I am! I wouldn't be me if I were different.

[chaussurre]

Some thoughts about healing in combat in games

Hey, I'm no game designer, so please be very critical of everything I'm about to say. Please do say if you don't agree with me, I'm very much in need of external point of views. Also, everything following is my point of view. If you find that I present it as general truths or whatever, this is because I have a hard time expressing myself correctly. Autism will do that.

I've thought about a way of representing and considering combat in games. What triggered this was my frustration about how healing and anti-healing mechanics are handled in games. Mainly, the two games that inspired this are Paladins and League of Legends (yes I know, "league cringe", but that's besides the point)

What I'm about to describe is the way I use for modeling HP-based combats when considering balance. Like all models, this will be very inaccurate when considering actual examples, but it serves as a basis as to how tackles the problems existing in games.

With all content warnings done, let's dive-in:

Hp-based combat, for a lack of better name, is what I call combat where fighters have a set quantity of hp and have to bring their opponents' to 0 before them. We can start the model as two characters, each having HPs and dps. The metric as to who will win is whichever of the two has the lowest "required time to kill the adversary". Here, in the simplified model, it is computed as "kill time = Opponent HP / Your Dps"

Dodging, attack range, and many other mechanics can be translating in these terms: dodge lower the opponents dps, range delay the moment the enemy starts to dps, etc.

In such a context, it is important to notice that the two variables we have, health and dps, have a diminishing returns effects. If you go from 1K hp to 2K, you doubled the time required to kill you. If you go from 10K to 11K, it's just a 10% increase. Meaning that an opponent with a higher dps will be less impacted by that extra HP. The same goes for DPS.

To understand it mathematically, in the computation "HP / DPS", you may say that increasing HP increase the time linearly, and yes, but it only does so while DPS is stagnant. So, if you increase both HP and DPS linearly, at some point DPS will take over. And increasing DPS linearly does not reduce the kill time linearly. It will only reduce it by a lower and lower amount.

Diminishing returns are an important factor in balancing these types of combat. They encourage diversifying your stats, and overall they prevent situations where an opponent could not be taken down in a humanely reasonable amount of time, or situations where an opponent is killed before they got to play.

This is why, for example, when you introduce other variables to the model, you design them in a way that includes diminishing returns. If you were to introduce a defense value to the model, under the form "the damage dealt to a player per second is dps - defense" then you'd get a situation where, since dps has diminishing returns, defense, instead, would get increasing returns. It can be seen when you rewrite the formula: "kill time = HP / (DPS - Defense)". The closer defense gets to DPS, the closer the kill time gets to infinity. So very few games design their defensive stats that way (and those that do do it for reasons that are specific to their games, so I won't include them in my reasoning)

The way League of Legends handle defense, for example, is by giving you an armor stats that translate to a "percentage of damage reduced" value. Kill time would look like "kill time = HP / (DPS * (1 - damage reduction))". Damage reduction itself still has increasing returns, but the way armor converts to damage reduction uses a formula so that it reintroduce diminishing returns. The exact formula is complicated and I can't be bothered to look it up, but basically 100 armor = 50% damage reduction, and as armor increase it gets closer and closer to 100% without ever reaching it. It makes it so that while tanky characters are encouraged to get some armor, you will need other defensive stats at some point.

So in the words of Voltaire, all is good in the best of possible worlds.

Let us talk now about healing. Healing is the amount of HP a fighter regains as time progress. They exist in different forms, but most of the time it's in the forms of "I get set amount of hp upon casting an ability" or "dealing damage heals me for x% of the damage dealt". In the model, we will represent them both as "per second, I heal x" as it is close enough to what actually happens in games.

Now, remember when I talked about defining defense in terms of your opponent's dps so that you never get unkillable ? Well, it is quite hard to define healing that way. Removing defense from the formula and adding healing, it now looks like "kill time = HP / (DPS - Healing)" which as you remember is exactly the formula I described as being problematic. Healing CAN causes you to go infinite. The amount of damage you need to deal to kill your opponent increases with time, which in turns increase time needed to kill, wich in turns increase the HP needed to be dealt, etc.

There are plenty of clips from PvP games where a character cannot die because they reached a tipping point in healing amounts.

And unless my model is fundamentally wrong on a point I failed to consider, game designers are very much aware of it. We keep including healing in PvP games because it is a genuinly fun mechanic. I love playing healing supports and being the one to bring my friends to glory. I love lifestealers and the dopamine I get when I'm so close to death and yet so far from it. When the only way out of a fight is to kill my way out of it (yes I am very much a warwick mid enjoyer). And I'm clearly not the only one appreciating a good healer. But because of the increasing return nature of healing, which means there is a tipping point where healing goes from useless to overpowered, many games have to include counter-balancing measures.

Battlerite made a mechanic where damage would also reduce your max HP by a percentage of it. You couldn't heal above it, and even with infinite healing there would be a point where your max hp is just 0.

I'm ... not a fan of this. First, there was something that didn't really tick for me in Battlerite, and I didn't enjoy the combats for some reasons I couldn't really put into words, so I am biased here, but the issue I have with this approach of anti heal is that it does not make it have diminishing returns. it just straight up puts a ceiling on it. Healing continue to have increasing returns BUT past a point it stops doing anything at all. And I don't like that. If I increase some stats on my character, even if I increase the wrong ones, it should always help me a little more.

League of Legend and Paladins took a different approach. There, you can buy items which reduce the healing the opponents get under certain conditions. The healing reducing is a set percentage, that does not stack.

I'm ... also not a fan of this. Similarly to previous anti heal, it doesn't remove the increasing returns. But even worse, in this case it just overall lowers it. Meaning that because of the tipping point nature of healing, whenever an opponents buys an anti heal item, your heal based character either suddenly becomes completely useless if you go too low under the tipping point, or is completely unaffected if you stay too high above it. Not only does that make the design of healing characters really hard for the game designers, because they are suddenly walking a very unstable bridge, it also makes fights that will always be frustrating to at least one player.

Here's what I propose: Your anti-heal item no longer reduce healing. Instead, whenever you see your opponent healing, you gain increased damage as a percentage of your DPS against them, stacking with no limits for as long as the fight duration (and is reset afterwards). The total bonus damage dealt this way cannot be more than the total healing you saw your opponent get (as a way to make sure you can't be punished for healing).

The main idea here is that healing still has its utility for short fights. You are still buying more time for yourself. But as time progress, the tipping point keeps getting higher and higher and at some point will get too low below it. Your time is still limited. Also, it redifine your dps and your opponent's healing in a way that links both, as armor in league does. Your 1v5 hyper-carry lifestealer may look unkillable in the fight, and you may feel the dopamine from being so low hp and yet so far from dying as you kill enemies after enemies. But your enemies still stands a chance. You may still see your HP yo-yoing between being full life and on death's door, which is deeply fun for you, but at some point if you fail to win fast enough your opponent will land an attack that will straight up one shot you, which will be satisfying for your opponent. A real unmovable object meets unstoppable force situation.

What are your thoughts ?

[delusion-of-negation]

Tbh I myself don't mind having ADHD, I treat it as a part of me, if I could get rid of just one specific thing it'd be executive dysfunction but the other aspects aren't really...bothering me in any capacity let's say. Like I experience them but it's like...ADHD was never seen as a real disorder over here, I was raised with the idea that this is just who I am and how I am. So that's what I treat it as. Like yeah, I've had a diagnosis since I was three, but again, I've never been medicated and it's not really seen as a "real" disorder, so I treat it the way my grandpa treats his colourblidness - it's just who we are. I can't imagine not having ADHD, it'd be like not being me or like having a part of me removed. I feel like it's innate to me, much like colourblidness to my grandpa. I was born like this, so it's me. The only condition I would remove if I could is BPD because that's not me, it's not inherent to me and it's more like a broken leg or a tumour. I wouldn't really desire to remove it if it made life difficult mostly for me, I think, but it's a condition that can have external consequences and I think people around me would be much happier with my existence if I didn't have it.

if we're bringing physical health issues into the "I wish I could rid myself of..." list it's gonna be doubling xD but executive dysfunction is really one of the hardest parts of adhd for me, along with the lack of focus and the irritability that is a hellish team up of my adhd and autism and a bit of my c-ptsd. with my DID, I think having a distinction of "who I am" based on what I really am by virtue of "I was born with it" makes even less sense than it would anyway - like naturally I'm not inclined to think of it entirely that way - but with DID it's like yeah I most definitely was not born with most aspects of who I am, since I've only existed for a few years and my body is not only a few years old. I think, I mostly desire to get rid of things because of their impact on me, otherwise DID would have to go because it definitely bugs other people but like... I'm really not gonna poof off this planet just because it's annoying for people that I'm unpredictable and shit. maybe that's selfish, but I think most folks wouldn't be like "yeah I'll die just because I can be a dick to my friends sometimes", y'know? it really is a tough conundrum and a tough place to know exactly where to draw the lines, and it totally is valid wherever you personally want to.

[femmefoxbeast]

I’ve been thinking a lot about body positivity and self-image and how to deal with that as a trans man.

This is a long post. The rest is under a read more because of this. It’s a bit rambling too. I’m just working through my thoughts.

CW: surgery mention, abuse mention, unhealthy eating/thoughts about eating mention, lots of discussion of social beauty ideals and how people are treated poorly for not meeting them. Nothing graphic though.

The pressure to transition into an ‘ideal man’

So - in September I had top surgery. It was definitely the right decision and (combined with starting testosterone in July 2019) it’s had a huge positive impact on my mental health. I look at myself in the mirror and finally see myself looking back. I feel like life is full of possibility at the moment. It’s pretty great honestly.

Here’s the thing - I’m chubby - I was in an abusive family situation for a while and ended up with some food issues which resulted in me losing a fair bit of weight and then putting a bunch back on.

Because I’m a bigger guy I’ve got dog-ears (excess skin and fat) at the ends of my top surgery scars. I feel mostly okay about them and am not planning to get a surgical revision. But I feel weirdly guilty about being okay with them.

I feel like there’s this pressure and expectation that if I want to look like a man (and I do because that’s what I am) then I should look like society’s ideal of a man. People seem to think I should want to be thin and muscular and to have a sharp jawline and just the right amount of body hair.

But to be honest I don’t want that. And I feel guilty about not wanting that.

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this - on one hand, I have this feeling that I’m doing something wrong or wasting my transition somehow? Logically I know those thoughts aren’t mine - I know that this external pressure I’ve experienced has put these thoughts into my head. But the idea has bedded itself surprisingly deep into my brain so I haven’t been able to get rid of the nagging voice going ‘you’re doing it wrong’.

On the other hand, I’m pretty repulsed by this expectation that I should conform even more strictly to societal beauty standards because I’m trans. I shouldn’t have to thin, I shouldn’t have to work out unless I feel like it, I shouldn’t have to try and look cis. I want to look like a man yes. But I want to look like a queer trans man because that’s what I am and if I look like a cis dude then I’ll start seeing a stranger when I look in the mirror again.

It doesn’t help that the pressure to conform isn’t just interpersonal but structural - for example, trans people often have to be below a certain BMI to access surgery on the NHS and even in some private hospitals. Because of this, every time I’ve had to interact with the clinic that prescribes my hormones they’ve made some pretty yikes remarks about my weight.

I still remember, in our first meeting, how the person assessing me commented that if I could lose some weight then I’d be very handsome due to being fairly tall and broad-shouldered for a trans guy. It made me feel like they saw me as an object that could be shaped and moulded into whatever they wanted - into a symbol of their mastery over medicine.

It was dehumanising as hell.

Femininity, fatness and autism

Being overweight and a man who is slowly starting to present in a more authentically femme manner is interesting.

It makes me feel like some kind of horrible pervert a lot of the time.

I think we’ve got this image of a fat, effeminate, creepy dude so embedded in our collective consciousness that it’s poisoning my self-image a little. It doesn’t help that this collective caricature has a lot of autistic traits and well - I’m autistic.

It sucks because I try very hard to be respectful and non-creepy. I don’t think other people perceive me that way, from what I can tell.

But my brain keeps insisting that if I wore a dress or lipstick or high heels then I’ll transform into some Silence of the Lambs-type figure.

So I’ve been restricting myself to just painting my nails and wearing necklaces sometimes.

But I don’t want to do that any more. I want to be myself as hard and joyfully and authentically as I can all of the time. I feel like I’ve spent so long repressing myself - first because I was in the closet about being queer and trans and then because I was trying my hardest to pass due to not being about to handle social and physical dysphoria at the same time.

I guess it’s something I need to work through... but I’m not going to give up and hide away again. I won’t do that.

Transandrophobia

The other thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is how the sex characteristics primarily associated with men - for example, facial and body hair - are seen in a negative light. Largely in social justice spaces and communities but in the wider world to some extent also.

In social justice spaces, there is a lot of fear and dislike of maleness and masculinity. I can understand why but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with as a man who is marginalised due to his gender. I don’t feel very safe or comfortable outside of these spaces but it’s often a pretty tough experience to exist in them too.

This dislike of male things extends to physical traits that are seen as male also. Even in supposedly trans-inclusive spaces, I’ve seen this vocal repulsion to things like body hair and facial hair. Disgust towards traits like this is harmful to pretty much everyone who doesn’t fit cis, perisex, white beauty standards.

People who express this disgust in trans inclusive spaces often seem to think that their words will only hurt white, straight, able-bodied, perisex cis men and that it’s therefore fine.

However, I don’t think it’s okay to talk about cis guy’s bodies like that - for one because it’s just a mean thing to do and for two because even if you want to go out of your way to hurt cis men’s feelings then there’s still no way for you to prevent unintended collateral damage if you say horrible things about someone else’s body in a public place.

So if it’s wrong to make comments like that towards relatively privileged people then it’s very, very wrong to say such things about the bodies of trans people, intersex people and people of colour.

Another factor that harms trans men and other transmasculine people specifically is how people tend to react towards our bodies at varying times during medical transitioning. People (especially cis women) tend to react very positively towards us having feminine physical features - being soft and hairless and pretty-looking. Then we receive backlash if we choose to transition - we run into this idea that we’re “ruining” our “precious, sacred, feminine bodies”.

This nasty, entitled rhetoric tends to crop up strongest among TERFs but I’ve come across less explicit, less obviously transphobic variations in trans inclusive communities also.

This demonisation of “male” traits messed with my head when my hormones started to take effect. I was really happy to feel my dysphoria decreasing but at the same time, I had to come to terms with looking well, ugly. At least - ugly according to the spaces and communities I am a part of.

[duchessofostergotlands]

Hi, jess! A couple of months ago I sent you an ask about a reality tv show (the farm) and a participant who has bpd (she didn’t win the 1 million price, btw - but she was so happy when she found out that a good portion of the public supported her, specially women ❤️ she’s famous because of only fans and most of her followers on social media, before her participation on the show, were men. So she said she was happy to see so many women supporting and following her now). Anyway while watching the show, I realized many of her behaviors were so similar to mine. Then my mom and sister, who live with me, told me they noticed that too. I decided to ask my psychiatrist and psychologist (I’ve been dealing with depression for the past 10 years), but both didn’t give it much credit. At the time I agreed with them - they said I probably don’t have bpd because the behaviors I was describing only happens when I’m home, with people I trust. I’m very “controlled” when I’m with other people, including my dad (who hasn’t lived with me since I was a kid). The point is, I’m ALWAYS making a huge effort trying to control myself in public - it’s exhausting and I believe it’s one of the reasons I tend to isolate myself. I think I’ve actually learned to camouflage my feelings and to avoid things that trigger me. I used to be more “uncontrolled” as a kid, before I created this deep rooted fear that people’d leave me because of these behaviors and reactions. Do you think it’s possible to camouflage some of bpd’s symptoms? And, if so, do you have any tips on how I could talk to my psychiatrist and psychologist about it? —— I didn’t want to make this ask any longer than it already is, but one of my childhood friends was recently diagnosed with autism. We don’t talk much nowadays, but she messaged me last month to tell me about her diagnosis and to ask if I felt I had some of the same treats - thinking retrospectively, we were very alike. It made a lot of sense and I remembered you said sth about bpd and autism sharing some similarities in some aspects of how the brain works. She also told me about recent studies showing the underreported diagnosis in women. My psychiatrist and psychologist also dismissed it, because I don’t avoid eye contact and have friends. I’m really confused right now, but it’s also kinda relieving to get to know myself a bit more and to think that the struggle I’ve felt my whole life is real. (Sorry for the long text!)

Hey :) Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. Just like to be able to dedicate a bit of time to longer messages like this and I rarely have the attention span for it! But of course I remember the conversation, it was really interesting to hear about what the contestant went through. 

So yes, BPD and autism are often misdiagnosed as each other as there are similar traits that are often found. Usually around attractions to patterns and structure and also around empathy. Like I don’t generally feel empathy for people in the same way most people do. I’d say unless you’re a close friend or family member - or maybe if you’re a child - I probably wouldn’t feel empathy towards you. I generally make decisions about moral standpoints and such based on what logically makes sense to me rather than any kind of emotional connection because I just don’t really feel that. I think the reasons autistic people may sometimes struggle with empathy are different but to an external person would seem very similar so can often be confused. 

To address your two points that made you unsure about the diagnoses, BPD is definitely highly interpersonal so it can change drastically depending on who you’re with. I can be friends with someone for quite a while and they have no idea but if I’m in a romantic or physical relationship with someone they’ll know within a few days. Romantic relationships are my personal trigger so they’re where I struggle the most. Then in terms of autism, lack of eye contact doesn’t really mean anything. I think that’s a common misconception people have but two of my cousins are autistic and they were both very outgoing and friendly, they were incredibly tactile, I didn’t notice them not looking me in the eye but I probably don’t look people in the eye much because that feels weird haha. Women in particular are not well studied when it comes to autism as you kind of mentioned. They are generally better at “masking” and so are often misdiagnosed or their condition isn’t picked up until well into adulthood. So even if you have friends and can look people in the eye it wouldn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t fit the criteria. 

I wouldn’t want to diagnose you with anything myself as I’m not a professional and I don’t know you personally. The DSM outlines the criteria for being diagnosed with BPD. You have to demonstrate at least five of the following and as with all mental illnesses they have to cause a significant impact on your ability to carry out your responsibilities and go through daily life:

Chronic feelings of emptiness

Emotional instability in reaction to day-to-day events (e.g., intense episodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

Identity disturbance with markedly or persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)

Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

Pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as "splitting")

Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-harming behavior

Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

Those are the criteria that would most likely be used to assess you. In the UK we can be diagnosed with depression and anxiety by a GP but have to go to a psychiatrist or psychologist to get a PD diagnosis. It sounds like you’ve already been in contact with them. I’m not too sure how it works where you are. Can you get a second opinion? Are there other doctors you could make an appointment with? Could you go private? I’m very aware of the fact that having the NHS in the UK means that my experiences are not applicable to everyone’s circumstances but for me when I first went to get help I was given meds and a depression and anxiety diagnosis and sent on my way. When that didn’t help I went back and got a higher dosage. And then it still didn’t help and finally I was kind of at rock bottom (or I thought so at the time) and needed help and so what I did on that occasion was have a friend accompany me into the room. They had created a list of things they’d seen me do or heard about me doing that were concerning to them and gave them to the doctor, and they kind of backed me up and gave me moral support. It shouldn’t have taken someone else being in the room for me to be taken seriously but having someone there who could express what I might have been too shy or self conscious to say was really helpful. In the end I got referred for treatment and it wasn’t right for me ultimately as my problems were more complex but it helped for a bit. I don’t know if there’s anyone in your life you trust to be able to be there to support you but I think it can be really intimidating to push back with doctors and professionals and having someone there who knows you and cares about you can be the thing that gives you that extra bit of courage you need. 

I’m not sure how helpful that is but I’m available if you want to ask me any questions about BPD or any explanations of how I experience the symptoms or anything like that :) 

[lostlegendaerie]

44?

44. Rant about something writing related.

I just did a big rant about Bioshock Infinite so I’m gonna switch gears and rant about something positive, and that is about how writing has impacted me over the years.

I’ve not talked about this for a while, but I grew up homeschooled and on dial up Internet in rural Indiana; not an easy place to be but especially not with undiagnosed ADHD/other accessories from the autism sundae bar + being indeterminately queer. I had very few close friendships growing up (as in, I would have one Best Friend I would see once a week at homeschool PE and they would usually move /go to public school/etc after a year) and online became my refuge. Specifically, fanfiction.net because it was the only thing that would load in under 30 minutes per page. (Yes, you read that right. The usual internet speed was 24 kilobites per second. KILO. as in 1/1000 of a MEGABITE.)

I can still remember the name of the first person who left a kind comment on my fanfiction. I still have many of my favorite stories saved in plain text documents on my external hard drive. Hell, there’s a couple people on here that I met on a TWEWY het ship forum I made on FF.Net (Joshyme’s Hachiko, and I think it’s still up. I haven’t checked in years)

The thing about stories is that we’ve been sharing them for as long as we’ve had language. And while it hurts me to so rarely see posts that lift up writers (especially fanfiction writers) and that our stuff doesn’t usually get a fraction of the traction that visual art gets: I see you. I’m happy you’re here. Keep writing. I promise, someone out there loves your work enough they have parts of it memorized, even if you don’t know it.

[faecaptainofdreams]

Something else that i'm giving to Walter because how funny would it be to tack on something else to his list of oddities? Lance learns about his GCS after walking into his house one night to find the lad in a frilly tank top and pink shorts, strategically placing white sticky notes with colored numbers on them around the living room. As it is, each number has the same color. ------- "Lance: Um... Am I interrupting somethin'...? Walter: Nope! Just a new project. Lance: Pet project, or work project? Walter: Pet project. *focused* Lance: *looks around* ... Okay, so... I'm noticing a pattern... Walter: Mm-hm. *writing on another sticky note* Lance: What's with the numbers, why they all the same color? Or is it complicated. Walter: *sticks new number on the wall* It's a little complicated, but not by too much. I'm displaying numbers in sets of organized and unorganized patterns around the room to evaluate my Grapheme Color Synesthesia on a visual, external level. Lance: >8o Your -- your fuckin' what??? Walter: *writing again* *giggles* No fucking, just Grapheme Color Synesthesia. Lance: *under his breath* Smartass... Yeah all right, what is that? Walter: GCS is a condition where an individual internally perceives letters and numbers as having their own colors, as well as sometimes genders and personality. Some people physically see colors when they look at numbers and letters, but other people like me only think about it in our heads. Lance: Walter: Lance: Walter: *smiling* It doesn't really impact daily life, it's completely natural; second nature. Lance: *blink* So... In your head, letters and numbers have a specific color...? Walter: For me it's mostly numbers, but sometimes letters, yeah. Also they have genders and personalities. I could honestly go on for hours about it. Lance: Not to sound like a dick, but is this a Autism thing? Walter: Hah hah! No, you don't have to have Autism to have GCS. For me it's just a coincidence to have both. Lance: ...IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOU? Walter: *starting to laugh* Lance: If a cat meows during a lightning strike and you hear it, will every single hair on your person grow four inches? If you don't clip your toenails for a month do they harden into enamel and become feet teeth?! Walter: *DYING* LANCE STOP-- Lance: If you-- Walter: *grabs Lance's arm* STAAAAHP!! I'm crying!!" ------- When Lance is excited, i imagine his imagination can get pretty wild and Walter would find that interesting Anyway since i'm projection-dumping on this one character, here's a link to a post i made better explaining GCS and my specific condition. Enjoy, tell me what you think! www.deviantart.com/foxdragonlo…

[partyblade67]

What Is Ocd?

Yoga For Anxiety.

Content

The Signs That You Need Aid For Stress And Anxiety.

Therapy For Children As Well As Youngsters In Glasgow.

What Is Act Therapy?

A hidden compulsion might be mental counting to neutralise a troubling and also unwelcome image. An obvious compulsion is physical, as an example, cleaning, or checking points repeatedly to stop the obsession. Uncontrollable practices are really organized - most frequently set to a regular in an effort to avoid the apparent danger from taking place. You may really feel a responsibility to accomplish certain activities to repress the hazard, as you really feel that it will certainly hurt on your own or a liked one. The compulsions are employed as a coping system to ease as well as 'stop' the thoughts from ever before taking place. For example, if you believe that you may damage a close participant of your household, you will demonstrate compulsive behavior.

Contact your General Practitioner or treatment group right away if you ever before feel you can not take place. You can also phone the Samaritans on, or you can call one of these helplines or support groups or NHS 111. Keep in mind, you're not the only one as well as even simply speaking with a person regarding your problem can considerably boost your lifestyle.

The Signs And Symptoms That You Need Assistance For Anxiousness.

If you are experiencing a boost in anxiety and also distress and also require extra assistance, there is no embarassment in asking for it. We share recipes, health understandings & reality success stories from our patient households. Given over 70% of our body immune system remains in the intestine it is not shocking that poor "seeding" with germs as a result of C-section and the loss of microbial debt to anti-biotics can incline kids to immune disfunction. Normally, OCD behaviours are very first observed in late youth or early adolescence. In children with autism, the onset tends to be a great deal earlier, manifesting before the age of 3. The remaining 60% don't respond and also are delegated deal with this devastating symptom.

Religion - feeling as though you require to state prayers a particular amount of times to recover your confidence after having anti-religious ideas. Contamination - really feeling the requirement to clean because of the worry of something being dirty. Just half an hour of exercise a day can help to refocus your mind and will likewise release feel-good endorphins-- helping relieve sensations of anxiety. While it is possible to just have compulsive thoughts or simply have obsessions, a lot of victims will certainly emulate both. Anxiety-- the undesirable fixation then prompts a sensation of intense stress and anxiety or distress.

Therapy For Children As Well As Young People In Glasgow.

Typical reasoning is impacted which can be very upsetting and obsessive thoughts can be overpowering, using up hrs of time. Such idea patterns are tough to damage and it is not uncommon to seek routine guarantees. Obsessional concerns don't always lead to compulsive rituals; instead they can create intense worry of an outcome. Fascinations may have to do with violence, contamination, sexuality or injury. Points in your life are not in the proper order or not symmetrical sufficient or in the appropriate area e.g. ornaments are out of positioning as well as you really feel troubled by this. The primary psychological treatment for OCD is cognitive behavioural treatment consisting of direct exposure and also feedback prevention. About Us can help ease anxiousness as well as support those with OCD.

How long can anxiety last?

Anxiety is often related to a specific situation. It tends to build up and continue for some time. A panic attack starts suddenly, symptoms peak after 10 minutes and usually abate after 30 minutes or so, although the effects may last longer.

My daughter established anxiousness, OCD and illogical anxieties, intense rage and extreme sensory handling difficulties. There were some very long as well as dark days for our family as well as it would be years, having left a route of specialists and also bunny openings behind us, prior to our child would certainly be diagnosed with PANDAS by a doctor in the USA. It is recognized as a covert problem as many people with BDD are as well embarrassed to reveal their main trouble. We know extremely little concerning cultural influences in BDD-- for instance, it might be more usual in cultures that place a focus on the value of look. In the West, it is equally typical in males and females although milder BDD may be much more usual in ladies. Obsessions are irrational as well as not reflective of common behavior or values.

What Is Act Treatment?

Marriage Counselling looks to educate the person that it isn't the thoughts that are the major issue; it's what the individual construct from those ideas as well as exactly how they act on them. Ways of believing-- Depending on the individual's moral outlook on life, ideas like 'what would occur if I stepped in front of that train? Yet if a person has an incredibly high feeling of obligation and also morality, they might feel that it's their fault these involuntary thoughts enter into their head, that makes the thoughts more likely to return. The quantity of inspecting that is needed to 'neutralise' the fixation varies from duplicating it a few times to hundreds of times, which can take hrs. This recurring monitoring can seriously influence a person's job and also individual relationships. I began picking up little rituals that I felt urged to do for no actual reason.

CBT can not remove your troubles, yet it can aid you handle them in a more workable way.

It is based on the understanding that your thoughts, sensations, physical feelings and actions are adjoined, and also can catch you in a vicious cycle.

CBT is a structured talking therapy frequently used to treat stress and anxiety and depression however it can be made use of properly for other problems.

By the end of the program you'll understand what encourages people, and be able to help them boost their efficiency, wellbeing, and management abilities.

This programme provides you with a wide understanding of the concepts and methods of dance motion therapy essential for secure as well as efficient scientific job, and also enables you to practice as a dance motion therapist.

Fascination-- where an undesirable, invasive thought or prompt repeatedly gets in an individual's mind. OCD affects different people in different methods, however usually appears as a particular pattern of behaviours. Patients discover themselves in a cycle of fascinations and also obsessions, and because both are spontaneous it can be really difficult to quit. Anxiousness regarding coronavirus is normal and also you are definitely not the only one. The circumstance is raising stress and anxiety in even the most stalwart person.

Adhd Institute Meetings.

If you have OCD, your fascinations will more than likely focus on worries, fears, impulses or even photos. Short-lived alleviation-- A short-term relief from the stress and anxiety or stress and anxiety is gained from the uncontrollable practices. This cycle repeats when the fascination returns, usually right after. There are a number of misleading stereotypes bordering this problem, including the suggestion that victims are very neat and clean.

I was stepping on drains pipes a certain number of times, touching certain things two times and avoiding many situations in instance I could not finish my obsessions. While every instance is special, lots of people that have OCD state their symptoms began in childhood. Kids with OCD might stress that points aren't in the 'ideal order', they may be worried about shedding ownerships or have an obsession to gather things. If the obsessions are concealed (i.e. can not be seen externally) someone might state they have 'Pure O'.

[matildainmotion]

The Monstrous Shame of Motherhood and the Quest for a Cure

I feel exhausted. Even-more-than-usual exhausted. Whoever knew that staying at home could be so incredibly tiring. We have our daily outings – mainly to the golf course, which is the nearest green we have. The other evening, when we had finally made it out the house, and the children were running ahead of me across the fitted-carpet grass, I had a thought: “Maybe it will be okay,” and instantly I wanted to cry. It wasn’t a thought only about the pandemic. It was about the lot: the pandemic, plus how to get an autism diagnosis for my son that supports him, plus my 78 year old mother staying well, plus my husband’s work and the theatre community surviving in a post-Covid world, plus managing to finish my book, plus both my children’s long term futures, plus the world’s long term future and climate change, plus racial inequality, plus economic inequality, plus gender inequality, plus, plus…..

In that moment I realised that a kind of deep worry is such a constant for me now that I have grown accustomed to it, so that it is like the planes that used to fly over our house in London – a noise so familiar that after a while I no longer hear it, and yet it is there, every few minutes, unnoticed, another monstrous metal groan. And when it stops - when the planes stay down, when the worries lift up - the sudden silence is startling, enough to make me cry. But – here’s the thing- thanks to the lockdown I have realised that it isn’t just worry to which I have grown accustomed in this way. There is something else, even more monstrous, which it has taken me a long time to name – and its name is shame.

I believe the shame comes from a thousand ‘shoulds,’ from the many things I feel I should be doing as a mother and am not.  Motherhood, along with the paraphernalia of nappies, wipes and purees, comes with a huge bundle of shoulds. The very first thing I did, nine years ago now, on discovering that I was pregnant, was to rush out to Waterstones and buy a book on what I should and shouldn’t eat during the next nine months– and that was only the beginning. The shoulds come from everywhere, a mountain of well-meant advice, not only from books, but from doctors, midwives, family members, partners, friends, other mothers, even complete strangers. I remember standing in a shop queue with my three-week-old son in a sling, when the woman behind me leant forward and touched one of his toes. “Where’s his socks?” she said, “He’ll catch his death of cold.” On the one hand I felt reasonably confident that carrying my son around sock-less was not going to endanger his life, on the other, as a brand new mother, I was nonetheless shaken by the idea that my son’s survival was up to me, and that many different people had many different ideas about how best I should fulfil my role of raising and protecting him. At times, even my instinct, that famous maternal inner guide, seemed like a mysterious thing that someone else had told me I should follow.

Mothers Who Make began, in part, as a response to all these shoulds. When I went along to the new mother and baby groups, that I also believed to be obligatory, I noticed a distressing pattern. All too often we were simply swapping ‘shoulds’ with each other and coming away feeling worse than when we arrived. No place or position was safe: I met mothers who felt they should be breastfeeding, mothers who felt the need to put a label saying ‘breastmilk’ on the bottle they fed their baby in public, as well as mothers who felt they should be weaning their baby and moving rapidly onto solids. I met mothers who felt bad about co-sleeping and mothers who felt bad about not doing so. In those early days of mothering - when you should be feeling overjoyed - there are even charts that tell you what should be happening when, how much your child should weigh, by when they should be making eye contact etc. It is not that these charts are entirely unhelpful or inaccurate, but they certainly encouraged my constant questioning: is my child okay? Am I okay? Am I doing this right? And if I thought I wasn’t, if I was not doing what I should, I felt ashamed.

I have felt many parallels between lockdown and early motherhood – the sudden cessation of all usual activity, the focus on ‘intensive care’ and care-taking, the washing, the sense of vulnerability, the way leaving the house seems like an epic adventure, the isolation and longing for connection. And, as in early motherhood, our diverse lives are again apparently aligned. We are all in the same situation: all the mothers in those baby groups had a new born / all the mothers I know now are in lockdown due to a pandemic. This makes comparison seem possible, even appropriate. There is a set of scales around again – I weigh our lives on it and find myself at fault.

Let me give you a small sample of some of the shoulds that fly low over my home, through my mind, like aeroplanes, a few of the many that I have collected over my nine years of mothering. I should get my children to bed earlier. I should give them less screen time, or it shouldn’t happen first thing in the morning, or I should manage the whole issue of screens in a better, different way. I should give them less choice about what they eat. I should make sure they eat more fresh foods and less sugar. I should make them help around the house more. I should hold the structure of the day better. I should make sure everyone stays at the table when we’re eating. I should take steps towards weaning my daughter. I should never resort to threats – to the ‘if you don’t stop x, you won’t get y’ pattern. And so on and so forth – you get the gist. And because I do not do these things - and I imagine a thousand other mothers who are doing them wonderfully - I feel ashamed. I realise as I write this that my ‘shoulds,’ as listed here, are nice, white, middle class ones- signs of privilege. Shame is a heavy word and it is associated with far darker things than letting your kids watch too much telly. I want to acknowledge that my issues are trifling compared to those many have to navigate, but shame, whatever the context, is still shame and it is powerful. As someone who was once anorexic, I know that shame can sit alongside privilege and that, where present, it undermines the ease of even the most comfortable life.

Back in Jan 2019 I wrote a blog about guilt. I now think I was muddling up some of my guilt and my shame. In general, I feel guilty about specific instances that have an immediate, present moment, ground-level reality: I shouted at my son when he blasted water over the bathroom with the shower head and that triggered one of his big, aggressive rages. If I feel guilty about something, I can say sorry about it, to the person or people I have wronged, and then it’s over. Shame, for me, is more like the ongoing aeroplanes, it is long term - a long haul flight. On the bad days, motherhood seems like a very lengthy exam, the end of it still twenty years away. My children are not the examiners – certainly not for now – they are the results. Depending on how the children turn out, I will pass or fail. There are external examiners, keeping track, making notes, of all the things I am doing or not doing. And who are they, these examiners? I think, somewhere in my psyche, there is an impressive panel of them, made up of everyone who has ever shared ‘a should’ with me, from the author of the book on what to eat during pregnancy, to the woman in the queue who wanted my son to be in socks, to the many other authors, friends and strangers who have offered me advice - they are all sitting there, scribbling on their notepads, shaking their heads. They are not bad people. Many of them are people for whom I have enormous respect, which makes it worse. I believe in their advice – seriously, I should be following it.

In my blog on guilt, I found my guilt a figure – made it into an image that helped me connect to the things that mattered to me, lying underneath the guilt. It turned out to be a Mary Poppins-like character, flying a kite. I think my shame has a very different form. There is the panel of judges, frowning from a distance, and then there is the shame herself, much closer in, and, like the sound of the low-flying planes, she’s monstrous.

My son’s latest obsession is the Beast Quest books (he has moved on from My Little Pony - woe betide you if you mention his former interest to him). There are over a hundred Beast Quest books, all with the same basic formula – boy meets monster. Giant birds, snakes, insects, spiders, bears, apes, hounds, trolls, ogres, dragons – you name your flavour of nightmarish monster, it will be there. I am glad to say there is a reasonable spread of gender representations across the monsters – sadly none of them are trans but there are some mothers. My ‘shame monster’ is definitely a mother. She is immense, stinking, gruesome and green. Her roar is the soundtrack of my days, to which I have grown accustomed. In some of the Beast Quest books the beasts are evil and must be destroyed, but in some they are good, set under an evil curse, from which they must be freed. I think my monstrous shame mother is one of these – good at heart but under pressure, after years of judgement, she has turned malevolent. And here is the irony: I believe her malevolent aspect has a more toxic impact on my children and our household, than any of the things such as screen time, sugar, late nights, unstructured days, which have driven her into this terrible state. Her constant growling makes me tense, fractious and very, very tired. I don’t think I can go on like this. So, what to do? How to release her from the curse? And who would she be without it?

Often the opposite of shame is presented as pride. But I think pride too is problematic – the panel of judges, external examiners, is still present in the dynamic, it’s just that they are giving out good marks instead of bad. So, if the shame-beast, when transformed, does not turn into the proud mother, who does she become?

As ever, when I am wrangling with a question in my mothering, I look to my making for answers. Throughout the lockdown I have been writing whenever I can. Always, when the children are having their screen time. Often, when I should be getting them dressed, or focussing on making us breakfast, or preparing them for bed. I don’t write because I should. I write because I want to do it, because it helps me give things meaning, because it brings me joy. I think back to that teary moment on the golf course, watching the children run ahead of me over the grass. What made the worry lift, the planes stop, the monster turn out good? Yes, I think it was a moment of joy. I think, when the gory green monster is not sweating with shame, she is lit up with joy.

So much, so often, is laid at the mother’s door. On the one hand we are ‘just’ being mums, with minimal status, doing an insignificant job, and on the other, we are accorded huge significance – everything can be traced back to us, to our care or the lack of it, our early influence. I do not wish to deny our responsibility as mothers, but I do not believe our shame helps us to shoulder it, or that we should shoulder it alone. When I started Mothers Who Make I wanted it to be a held peer-support space where women could share their challenges without shame, and celebrate, even cultivate, their joy. I wanted to create a group in which we did not find further fault, did not inadvertently end up undermining or judging one another, adding to the great big bundles of shoulds already carried. It is why it is still vital to me that we welcome every kind of mother – breastfeeding, bottle-feeding, those who keep their mothering and their making strictly separate, those who take their children to work – every kind. It is also the same impulse that lies behind our Matronage scheme. Rather than a panel of judges telling us whether or not we are worthy, I want to see whether we can hold each other up. We have been asking people to become our ‘Matron Saints’ by giving us the price of a coffee a month - £3. We need 300 of you to become self-sustaining. So far we have a fantastic 99! Once we reach 100, I am going to announce a new project in celebration– a way, I hope, to keep the same ethos of grassroots peer-support alive and kicking – kicking off the shoulds, turning them into wishes and dreams.

And in the meantime, whilst you are all rushing to bring us over the 100 Matron Saint mark, (go here to do so: www.motherswhomake.org) these are your questions for the month: as a mother and/ or as a maker what are the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ you carry around with you? Do your ‘shoulds’ turn into shame? And then- as an antidote to this -what brings you joy? In your mothering? In your making? As we slowly emerge out of this pandemic, can you do more of this? Can you create a more shameless world? Can you help make the monsters joyful?

[soulvomit]

I'm really feeling that *when* you grew up, can have really profound impact on sense of self and identity in some pretty all-encompassing ways, and childhood experiences (not merely exterior socialization, or that would be all kinds of essentialism about everything, but probably a mix of interior and exterior experiences) can even feed into identity formation differently based upon when and where that childhood took place.

I had to form my identity at a time when there was still a major zeitgeist of there only being Weird and Normal. "Weird" cliques tended to be more often be Big Tent.

People weren't talking about autism (the stereotype of autism was an institutionalized individual with profound disabilities) as a spectrum. Geeks and nerds were basically the same thing still (in the 70s through early 90s, there was no mass consumer fandom culture). There wasn't the big public scrutiny over fanfic because most people didn't even know about it. (When something is deeply subcultural, it often becomes a place of refuge from "the norm." But then becomes subject to scrutiny by people who don't understand that thing or its history, when it becomes better known.)

You were normal or you were one of The Freaks(tm). If you were a middle class or working class person and you did ANYTHING or had ANY interest that wasn't basically whatever your gender, class, and race prescribed interest by 1980s society, then you were a Weirdo. Basically all weirdos were lumped together. WE WERE NOT USING THE WORD "GEEK" YET. We only barely used the word "nerd" at that time.

Some of us formed our identity through this and began calling our cliques "the freaks" or "the weirdos."

Though crowds of Freaks(tm) like my own often contained people who would have modern identity labels later, or later be diagnosed with clinically based reasons for Not Being Normal, these weren't actually what made a person Weird.

What made you Weird was simply Not Being Normal, and 80s Normal was a very specific thing. Ever notice that the "losers club" or "the group of outcasts" trope in 80s kid stories, often contains Jewish kids and POC kids as well as really smart kids and kids with disabilities? That's how specific 80s Normalcy was. (And certain kinds of weirdo culture were heavily gender-specific. I basically formed my identity as the female token in Weirdo Space.)

I struggle with where I'd fit into modern youth culture, because we didn't have all of these boxes: just one or two giant ones.

And my identity was largely already formed, I'd come to terms with being Weird. When I left my old group, things were already starting to change (that or the Bay Area has a much more atomized culture than LA does, idk.)

I actually have a lot of resistance to trying to further atomize my identity, or trying to in any way medicalize my weirdness. Gender norms and lack of cultural and class fit were the main reasons I thought I was autistic. It was my involvement in LGBTQ culture coupled with being around autistic people IRL (not online!) and learning about the deeply homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist history of psychiatry, that made me realize that if "female autistics can be taken for having a male brain" (ugh, but it was a common emerging trope of the 90s and 00s) then some version of the reverse must also be true - and based on my connections with Boomer aged gender non conforming people who endured medicalization during their 50s and 60s childhoods, often being GNC *was* the main thing "different* about them.

The idea of interior feelings of gender non conformity having nothing to do with hobbies or clothing preferences, just was not even on the map yet. But fuck, I've been in social settings where merely being AFAB and SPEAKING IN COMPLETE SENTENCES made one gender non-conforming. (Lots of us aren't aware of this. It's in the air we breathe.) I'm not sure at that point what is 1) my internal reality being different from most people's (how would I know?!) and 2) my external reality's rigid ideas of "normalcy."

I understand my weirdness as in no small part being because of culture. I feel like I have friends whose lives were ruined because the culture hadn't caught up to them. What if my best friend, a 6'4 trans woman, had been able to transition earlier, or live her best life in the 80s and 90s, instead of being a reclusive agoraphobe. What if my 40something friend who was diagnosed autistic in recent years, had gotten earlier recognition - before dropping out of school. I think about this all the time.

But I understand my own weirdness as being a combination of gender, cultural, and class based forces. I did not understand this until my 30s and 40s, when I started interacting with social justice culture. To some degree I'm weird because my parents are weird and raised me weirdly. Being raised weirdly makes a person weird.

There is a lot of stuff I held myself back from, or was held back from, because of being falsely medicalized. I used medicalization to fuel imposter syndrome: your interests are your talents and passions and gifts but mine are merely "special interests." Somehow over the course of my life everything that was actually a feature in other gendered and class settings was a bug in the ones I was raised in.

My believing I was autistic, was based on enough early life, school, and clinical data to be supported by clinicians who agreed that my early narrative sounded like a typical Aspergers narrative.

What the clinicians didn't know is that early in my life, I lived in a neighborhood where none of the other kids even spoke the same language. I had a father who raised me gender-neutral in many respects and I'd had more boy friends than girl friends as a child. My parents were always more privileged than our neighbors. Nowadays people would say we were the artsy first wave of gentrification, because people love to simplify things like whoa, but in reality many of the places I lived never gentrified at all and really we were just the one white family sometimes and later, the one computer family. I had white privilege in the real world but had parents who raised me to not think of myself as having white privilege or often not see myself as white. (That took a long time to unpack.) Finally if you are AFAB and have an IQ over 90 then you are probably already the “normative” society’s definition of Weird.

All of this would make anyone feel weird.

It's in big tent, mixed-use Pan-Weirdo Space that I found a home.

[destroyyourbinder]

dealing with binding damage/pain

I had a reader ask this question a month or two back and I just realized I never answered it! Since I've been on the topic lately I wanted to give them a response:

So I came to terms with my sexuality after identifying as ftm, and binding for three years due to internalized homophobia (luckily didn't change my body more than that because my parents are extremely conservative). Any advice with dealing with chest pain/tissue damage when no longer binding?

Hey there-- I'm really glad to hear that you've come to terms with being a lesbian; it's a long journey for a lot of us, and although it's definitely not over once you recognize you're "just gay" after all, it often opens your life up to possibilities you thought were forever closed. Once you've settled in, in my experience at least I've found it to be a big fucking relief in a lot of ways.

The advice I'd give you is really contingent on what kind of damage you suffered, where the pain is currently and what in particular exacerbates it, what you're currently doing with regards to wearing garments on your upper body, whether you also have posture changes due to slouching/binding, and how far out you are from when you've stopped binding. I'm going to write to a general audience both because I don't actually know what you're experiencing, because you might be unsure yourself or not realize something you're experiencing is related to binding-related (or dysphoria-related) issues, and because I think a lot of female people could benefit from this discussion. One of the resources I want to link you to is a 2017 study that I think I've reblogged a couple times now, called "Health impact of chest binding among transgender adults: a community-engaged, cross-sectional study" which is I think the only research piece that we have to have systematically examined negative health outcomes of breast/chest binding practices. I'd advise anybody binding or with a history of binding to look through this study to educate themselves on the risks and prevalence rates of a number of health issues commonly caused by or associated with binding. Not everyone knows or is willing to admit that certain issues they are experiencing could be binding-related so just simply having this information is a good start. You can find the study linked here for free: https://transfigurations.org.uk/filestore/binding-project-postprint.pdf I also want to preface this with the plea to please take seriously anything you're experiencing; I know it's a chronic myth in the trans community and in gender non-conforming female circles where people might bind that there is a level of binding that is "safe" or at least significantly "safer". Although your problems can escalate the more time you spend binding (whether measured in hours per day, the frequency with which you bind, or how much time total you've spent doing binding practice) or with certain binding practices (like using ace bandages or duct tape, "double binding", or using too much compression) binding can cause certain problems near-immediately, such as muscle aches or other musculoskeletal related pain, shortness of breath, and skin issues. Serious binding-related problems, like rib movement or decrease in lung capacity, can occasionally happen very quickly, i.e. within a few months of beginning binding regularly, even following generally well-regarded harm-reduction practices for binding.  I sometimes read of people who doubt that binding could have hurt them because they "only" bound for such-and-such a period of time or "only" with a commercial binder, and who seem to refer to some mythical lumberjack trans man who wears his binder 12 hours a day in the timberlands and has no problems, or at least just bears them through his beard with no complaint, as the gold standard for binding. I know for many female people bearing the pain and body issues that come with binding is considered a hallmark of masculine identity and that your right to name your distress as gender dysphoria is often in question if you decide that the costs of binding are too high for you. There is a very nasty arms race to the bottom in trans community sometimes about who is the absolutely most dysphoric and the absolute manliest, and if you don't think that any horrible level of nihilistic self-destruction is worth it to ward off the prospect of Really Being a Girl then you run the risk of losing this terrible game. I want to begin my discussion of binding risks and known problems with this because most of us struggle with this mentality in some form, at some point, and choosing to prioritize taking care of our bodies in a very basic way over doing what our dysphoria tells us is necessary to make it go away can be extremely difficult, to the point we may deny that we have anything happening with us that we need to take care of at all. Listening to your body will take a lot of time when all you could hear at one point was how gross, humiliating, disturbing, and wrong it was. It's a lot like learning to communicate with a species of animal you've never had to interact with intimately and that maybe you're repulsed by, like a rat (which are perfectly wonderful creatures, by the way). That all out of the way, the first question I want to ask is this: are you having any problems with breathing, your lungs, or general respiratory problems you suspect are related to binding? This is probably one of the most serious problems some people have with binding and is not something I feel comfortable advising on given that it can be extremely medically serious and life-limiting. Problems frequently cited are general shortness of breath, chronic wheezing or coughing, feeling deprived of oxygen especially when exercising, and feeling like you have fluid in the lungs. These may be more serious if you smoke, are being exposed to environmental allergens, or have a pre-existing respiratory issue like asthma. I did not experience this but would definitely direct you to seek advice from a medical professional if you are having lingering issues of this nature.

Binding is also known to cause permanent rib changes-- serious and/or chronic chest or back pain should probably warrant a trip to the doctor. Broken and cracked bones are possible from binding practices, or from becoming injured while binding. If you're experiencing intense or odd pain you may have also pushed your ribs out of alignment to hit an internal organ or compress a nerve. Some symptoms, including ones like gastrointestinal issues, can indicate that you have altered the position or function of organs contained inside your rib cage or that compression is affecting their ability to work properly. If you suspect this is going on I also don't feel comfortable advising you to do anything else but seek medical advice.

Costochondritis is a common symptom that people who bind experience. It is an inflammation of the cartilage that connects your ribs to your sternum (the center bone in your chest) and is something that I experienced even when just wearing tight/multiple sports bras. I had it off and on the entire time I wore bras or used a binder and it ranged in painfulness from mild to so-intense-I-had-trouble-breathing. It is usually a temporary condition, but it can reoccur continually over time to various degrees of intensity. I usually waited out the times it occurred more mildly, but if it's severe you may need a course of steroids to decrease inflammation (as I did twice in my late teens/early twenties). You can usually tell that you have it instead of some sort of more medically serious chest pain if you poke your ribs towards the center of your chest and the pain feels both external and shoots up dramatically. If you aren't sure whether the pain is located in your ribs or elsewhere, you should probably get things checked out to make sure you don't have a heart or lung issue from binding or otherwise. Another thing I want to mention is that you can very easily sprain or pull muscles from getting in and out of binders or moving around in them, especially if you're moving around vigorously or exercising. This should also generally be temporary and can be treated in the same way you usually would treat any muscle injury (rest, heat/cold, gentle stretching and movement) but even if you stop binding, look out for continuing symptoms from any serious pulls or strains you might have incurred while binding. Wrenching your neck in particular can result in lingering issues. It might make you feel stupid to admit or think about, but "dumb" injuries like pulling your shoulder while getting a stuck binder off are mechanically the same as any other injury, so keep an eye out. A lot of pain you might experience while binding or even years after binding has to do with your muscles-- this can be from binding directly from the way a binder/bra exerts force on your chest and shoulders, from range of motion issues from being constricted in a binder or from compensating for binding pain, or from chronic posture issues from hiding your breasts. I also want to note, because they're so common in trans and gender non-conforming female people, that autism in particular but other neurodevelopmental disorders can change your posture in weird ways, and your sensory feedback is likely atypical or not fully integrated so you might have odd ways of moving that aren't necessarily mechanically optimal. All these things together can lead to chronic pain throughout your body-- obviously most people talk about pain in the upper back, chest, shoulders, and neck-- but chronic jaw pain or headaches are a potential issue from tightness or referred pain from lower down, and compensating for upper body tension, motion issues, or pain can lead to changes in the position or motion of the lower back, hips, or legs which can lead to tightness and pain. I unfortunately have both lingering issues in my chest, shoulders, and back and a host of posture-related pain issues even over two years after stopping binding, due to ways that I compensated for wearing compression constantly on my chest (I would wear sports bras even to bed) and ways I changed my body posture to prevent "looking female". I have a slouch about as bad as what’s-her-face, as most trans men I have met also do regardless of whether or not they're post-mastectomy, and although it’s gotten better with mindful practice and lack-of-binder I am still totally not where I want to be. There are many physical therapy resources out there that are now publicly available online-- on resource websites as well as YouTube-- and regularly stretching using these strategies has basically held my body together this whole time through several physically intense jobs. I personally use a set of stretches for headaches, and a number of sciatica stretches, calf stretches, and trapezius-focused stretches that I found all over the internet. There is also a tumblr thread here (not all of which is posted on my blog, please check the notes) where another woman who experienced binding damage solicits advice and many people offer suggestions for binding-pain related stretches and exercises. I also made a DIY foam roller out of a 2-ish foot stretch of 3 inch PVC pipe and some squishy shelf liner that I glued around the outside, and I have a DIY rice bag I pop in the microwave for use as a heating pad. I have also found that regularly taking omega-3 oils helps mitigate the level of inflammation and pain my muscles can reach; I take algae-based oils because I am vegetarian but if you eat fish, regular fish oil pills will work just as well. If you are still wearing a supportive bra or have chosen to deal with stopping binding by stopping everything your muscles will not have learned to support your chest yet, especially if it's large. If you quit all chest-supporting garments cold turkey or go to only very minimal chest support after binding you might have a lot of pain initially. My general chest and breast pain has substantially decreased after 2+ years of being without a bra or binder, so it's worth a shot or two to learn to do this, but you will have increased pain initially until your body adjusts. It was both my actual chest muscles, wall, and ribs that hurt as well as my breasts (something that might be obscured by dysphoric-friendly language about "chests") but once my chest and shoulders became sufficiently built, my breasts "sagged" appropriately to hang where they were comfortable, and I adjusted to the sensory input of feeling the weight on my chest, I was ultimately more physically comfortable than I ever had been in bras or binders. The pain was not easy to get through-- it was sometimes excruciating-- but now I can do anything I could do previously with a bra or binder without one, including run. If you are in this position I recommend upper body exercise or introducing regular upper body work into your daily life; this will help you build muscles appropriately and learn to move your body in a mechanically optimal way. It does simply just take time if you are attempting to adjust to minimal or no compression on your chest, and stepping down more gradually can help (such as by wearing athletic compression wear, which I have a guide about here). But it took me probably about a full year before I no longer had this sort of pain, and about another year or so before it felt fully "normal". I talked more about the process of stopping wearing bras and what it felt like in this thread, if anyone is interested in knowing more. On the topic of changes to skin and tissue: sores, infections, skin damage, and so on are common from binding, especially if you are large-chested. I still have some mild issues with this in the summer, as many people do, when I sweat a lot and various fungal and bacterial microorganisms can easily proliferate. This should resolve itself over time if you wash regularly with a gentle antibacterial soap or cleanser, keep the area between and under your breasts dry, change your clothes daily, and try to wear loose-fitting clothing. But as always, anything that won't go away for weeks, or that is resulting in skin breakage, swelling, or sores, should be addressed by a doctor. My breast tissue did change from binding with a binder, and my breasts became more "floppy" and "soft". I gained more stretch marks than I had already had. I suspect I am more prone to breast pain than I was previously, and my nipples and breast skin have little conscious registry of sensation, but I don't know if that came from binding, either with a binder or bras. But to my knowledge most changes to your breasts from binding are largely "cosmetic". I have not heard word from anyone that this damages your breast as an organ, but then again most people who bind usually do not breastfeed. Stories by trans men who kept their breasts and became pregnant indicate that their breastfeeding is relatively normal, but we simply do not have the data to know how binding might affect breast function. I do not know either if you're more likely to do something to the breast tissue by binding which could increase the likelihood of any medical issue in particular or create the opportunity for pain. Mine are definitely "saggier" to some extent and have gotten even "worse" post-binding, but as I've noted this has not been a bad thing, because I do not wear a bra any longer and my breast tissue now hangs in a way that allows me to move without pain. Finally, I just want to mention there are a lot of emotions that you might feel from having binding damage in a similar way that anyone who did something to themselves in the name of transition or dis-identification might. I sometimes personally feel extremely stupid for having done what I did, and that makes it even harder to deal with pain or other physical issues, even though it was understandable that I reached for binding to cope with my feelings at the time. I also feel extremely stupid and conflicted about my values a lot of the time given that I still have impulses to go back to binding even though I know that it hurt me and I don't actually want to begin again. I feel really angry about how my body was sexualized at a young age and how my family and doctors dealt with my early puberty, about how my family chose to humiliate me for being neurotically "modest" instead of supporting me through something difficult. Sometimes I feel really bad about quitting binding or for having to quit because of pain because I feel like I was "proving" right people who criticized it or my impulse to hide my breasts for the wrong reasons, or even that they are right because I "deserve" the pain I feel as a result of trying to avoid my body. I feel exposed and ashamed a lot about my breasts, and it's been hard to cope with the effects of binding damage realistically in a way that values my not-being-in-pain when I'm also trying to manage dysphoric feelings. I feel messed up that I felt "validated" about having and using a binder and that I tried to ignore how much pain it put me through in favor of hoping that it would facilitate me some day achieving some ultimate male-like body state where basically I couldn't suffer anymore. These are all varieties of normal feelings to feel, and I just want others to know that it makes sense if you feel stuff like this. Re-centering on taking care of yourself and your body takes time if the feelings are really intense, but it's worth getting back to focusing on what you actually value-- your health, your functioning, and so on-- even if it takes a while, and you don't have to immediately ignore or push past what you feel to "get better".

[edsperegrine]

Musings on gender

So I want to talk a little bit about gender, specifically my gender and my feels around it.

Where to begin... my external and internal bits are what you'd expect from a cis woman (breasts, vagina, uterus, ovaries, wide hips, &c).  Hormonally it's a bit more complex - I have very low circulating estrogen (apparently below that of a standard postmenopausal woman, apparently this is due to being on hormonal birth control), barely menstruate (I haven't had a full-on period in probably more than a decade now), and (thank goodness) no longer have cramps. Plus my vagina is dry as a desert, and I have difficulty with penetrative sex due to vaginismus resulting from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome's effect on my pelvic floor musculature (long story short: my muscles are in permanent spasm holding my hips together, which makes penetration really hard because I physically can't relax the muscles). Pre-birth control I had heavy irregular crampy periods and I can't say I miss them much. Never been pregnant, have lactated once due to medication (fun! not actually fun).

So that's the biological side of it. I'm definitely not intersex or anything on that spectrum; the hormonal weirdness started after birth control treatment, and hasn’t been a lifelong thing for example.

When I was a teenager I wondered if I was FTM trans - oddly I grew up knowing about trans* folks before I knew about queerdom in general, mostly because my stepfather's roomie in college was an early MTF trans pioneer activist, and trans* identity was seen as a good, normal thing people could have (I was super lucky in this, most folks I know never had this as a normalized phenomenon as kids). I put it down at the time to an inadequate supply of good female role models in my fantasy/sci-fi literature and never really thought about it much. I've always been a tomboy, uncomfortable with typical performative "feminine" things like makeup, hairstyling, fashion, going to the bathroom in groups, yadda yadda. I wandered through most of my young adulthood pretty sure I was a cis woman. I certainly wasn't a trans man, and those were the only choices, right?

I met a few nonbinary folks in grad school, and it honestly took me a while to come to terms with the existence of gender as a non-binary phenomenon; I was fine with the idea that you could cross from one bank of the river to the other, but confused by the idea that you could exist somewhere in the middle, or outside the whole thing entirely. It took living with an (awesome!) nonbinary person during postdoc #1 to wrap my head around gender as a complex phenomenon rather than a simple binary switch, but now I'm firmly on board and a bit shamefaced about how long it took to get there! Whoo cis privilege.

Fast forward to postdoc #2, where I do fieldwork in Panamá. Compared with other places I've lived (USA, UK, Switzerland), the gender culture in Panamá is very different, far more 'typical' Mediterranean. Most relevantly to me, women (or anyone appearing different, actually) are subject to street harassment at a painful rate, ranging from elevator eyes, catcalls, invitations, horn honking, slow driving, and even police harassment. Very few Panamánian men are completely innocent of this behavior; the majority I interact with in person are like this, and it's disgusting. There is no good answer to this; although we talk a lot about fieldwork safety we usually discuss being targeted by other fieldwork colleagues, not being targeted by the culture as a whole. Oh well.

My months in Panamá were a whole new ball game where street harassment was concerned. In the US I'd occasionally dressed androgynously when I knew I might be a target (late night bus rides in Seattle come to mind), and I'd been a target on occasion, but it was fairly rare. In Panamá it was every day. I began to feel less and less female as time went on, and I was there for five months. When I returned to the UK it was a revelation - men on the street didn't stare, didn't catcall, and I could trust that the average man wasn't thinking about me as a sex object. Wow. I felt more comfortable being female in the UK, where being female doesn't automatically mean being sexually harassed on a daily basis.

So now, what is my gender? I'm not sure. I know I'm not male, I don't identify as trans* either. Demigirl doesn't feel quite right either (I prefer demiwoman, actually, it feels less... juvenile? patronizing? but if it's not my identity it's not really my place to say anyhow). I feel somewhere in that gray area between female and agender, with no tinge of male. I don't feel particularly fussed about pronouns; I use female ones because I'm used to them and it's what people default to based on my appearance. I am happy with singular they as well. Male pronouns feel a bit weird but not objectionable most of the time. No draw to other pronouns.

Two things influence my gender as well: my asexuality and my perhaps-autism-spectrum. As someone who is firmly asexual, I... don't get sexual attraction to people of any gender (maybe once or twice ever). I don't understand how sexual attraction even works! In some ways I feel that if I were e.g. heterosexual I would find defining my gender more easy because it would be the opposite of (or at least different to) what I was attracted to. Since I can't define my gender by my sexuality, out the door that goes. On the second point, I don't have a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but I am probably on the spectrum (it sure explains a lot of childhood & adulthood stuff). Lydia X. Z. Brown has discussed the term 'gendervague', writing:

"For many of us, gender mostly impacts our lives when projected onto us through other people’s assumptions, but holds little intrinsic meaning... For many (but certainly not all) autistic people, we can’t make heads or tails of either the widespread assumption that everyone fits neatly into categories of men and women or the nonsensical characteristics expected or assumed of womanhood and manhood." (https://www.aane.org/gendervague-intersection-autistic-trans-experiences/)

This feels close to me - in some ways I feel that I don't "get" gender the same way I don't "get" sexual attraction. What is gender anyways? What is it for, how is it useful? I sure don't use it to choose who to hit on in a bar! I don't precisely *forget* what gender an acquaintance is, but when I think of, say, Bob, the first thing that pops to mind sure isn't Bob's gender, but instead his hobbies, how we know each other, etc. I could describe Bob as a man, but it feels irrelevant somehow.

So, what am I, anyways? My body is a somewhat hormonally weird female body (in my case I am comfortable referring to my body as female for shorthand's sake, though I understand for many people this may not be an okay way to refer to their own bodies). My gender feels like it exists in some weird space between agender, female, demiwoman, and gendervague - the closest major category is probably nonbinary, with fluctuations on a daily basis (but genderfluid feels wrong, since the fluctuation space is relatively small most days).

In "Brave New World," Huxley introduces the term "freemartin" to refer to humans (as opposed to its traditional use in cattle) - XX people who are given a dose of testosterone before birth, rendering them sterile, and likely qualifying them as intersex people. In cattle, freemartinism happens when a cow is carrying twins; the female receives some cells in utero from her brother and becomes a chimera, externally female but infertile, somewhat masculinized. With my weird low estrogen levels (never had the other hormones tested), in some ways I feel like a freemartin - bodily surely female, hormonally less female. Though obviously not intersex, so maybe it's not such a great term, but it just FEELS right somehow.

So perhaps I exist as a freemartin, nonbinary human. I'm still not sure; this is a living, evolving phenomenon for me.