#dysphoria bloggin

[capturerextraordinaire]

whoops! dysphoria bloggin' again

[epochryphal]

oh aside i had a fascinating discussion recently about how jarring i find words like “kinnie” and “kinning”

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like beyond just coming up before those words existed, and coming from the older otherkin community while also being too weird/“not serious” for them as a conceptkin who didn’t buy into mythos framework or much of the common language around spirituality, but being too serious and archetype-focused for much of the blooming fictionkin community and copinglink/“i Kin to COPE” phenomena

(also influenced i’m sure by swan being my very first exposure to kin. i hope she’s well)

...but the fundamental issue so much for me was/is about species dysphoria, and inhumanity, and body, and disconnects with personhood

- being primarily glitchkin (exobinary/autistic/altersex/etc reasons), with any fictionkin elements arising very slowly and also being about this weird almost-dysphoria deeply-personally-unsettled-by-differing-interpretations, about taking it really personally when a specific trait of a specific character is mocked/maligned (anakin as cult-raised emotionally dysregulated, dirk as isolated identity-obsessive, even peridot as distressed by forcible removal of her limb enhancers in just that one episode) and going “shit this is like dysphoria??”

whereas for my kinnie friends it’s apparently like multiplicity and facets of self, and trying on and shrugging off characters like clothes, and it matters to them and helps them but part of how it does is keeping it playful instead of serious all the time - not shallower, inherently, but varying depth

like, i occasionally make jokes like “KIN” at a character that broadly fits my typical traits i vibe with - but it’s like .1% i actually mean it, because new kin id is rare for me (and like always an “oh god it is, isn’t it”). but apparently when my friends joke about kinning so-and-so that’s part of them trying it out and they’re maybe 50% serious or more?

super fascinating how we, like, are pretty good support for each other despite coming from, and having, rather different experiences (and using the same root word)

*handwaves about a comparison to non-binary as umbrella and gender identity/expression and dysphoria of body v social etc and clothes and coping and so onnn*

also hey guess what i uh. got through “look Just Because this character has the Isolated Childhood Trauma Thing and the flat affeCT HYPEREXPRESSIVE thing and the what are people thing doesn’t mean-“ and then got smacked with “Yo Younger You Was An Asshole Like Your Parent Even Tho You Hated And Never Wanted To Be Like That Parent, Here Com Dat Past” and fell over. so. todoroki shōto huh

[bandit-o-s-usb]

It's really awesome how you can just be trans -- you don't need to experience dysphoria or even gender fuckery, you can just be something you weren't aslong as you want to put the effort in

[lifeiszestyy]

*i feel that last post. my abuser wanted me to magically become a cisman so i had my own gender dysphoria issues. i can wear a tshirt and pants and a sports bra to flatten my already small chest but also i’m 5’2” and petite with a baby face so i was really self conscious about how i would never be the ideal she expected from me even if i underwent surgery or whatever, i would never pass

[bandit-o-s-usb]

[epochryphal]

mmm hey mind if I ask about, like, subjective experience-type motivations for going on blockers? and/or psychological effects of them? because like, I kept telling myself for years that dissociation as a method of dealing with dysphoria was a better/cheaper option than dealing with Fucking Doctors, but... here I am not at work now for the past week because I can't lift more than 10 lbs currently, So.

i mean…. hm.

so i did get to have my blockers covered by insurance for $0, nice (after paying out of pocket $200 for one month’s dose uncovered, not nice)

also got a bunch of “oh noes but this is for CANCER PATIENTS and I, As A Cancer Patient, Hated It, It’s Bad” from family members which wh…  and “no no this is Temporary because Your Bones and Unstudied” from doctors, who wanted to do a lot of Observing levels of things to let me stay on it

which is…why.. i… decided hey, how about i Naturally reduce my hormone level, but Not to the zero oh-no-bones-what-is-science level, by just having one outta two ovaries out.  yeah?  yeah

this is apparently about the same as going on blockers but a littler Safer, Maybe, We Still Just Don’t Know

but yes.  so, the whole specter of POSSIBLY MENOPAUSE!  which is there with t also but Somehow Different, Handwaving.  and that was an actual concern because heyyy that can be a time for bipolar ii to kick up symptoms and have a first manic/mixed episode, which is common in my family actually.  so there was watching for THAT.

otherwise it… i mean…. i did feel better while on them.  i don’t know if that was a placebo effect of Finally, Progress?  and it was only for a year while i was waiting for surgery to go through (which they, wouldn’t do until i, tried blockers?? ???)

however nothing really…stands out.  as a major sign they were doing anything.  (although i mean… what IS gender.  what IIIS dysphoria. fuck.)  there miiight be some records of it on my transition blog, @blockers-and-ectomies, but i’m not sure i haven’t, poked that much lately because it’s kind of depressing and full of medical trauma that was more to do with surgery and subtle doctor badness blahblah autism blah.

they’re supposedly pretty low risk for short-term use, in the low dose i was given anyway?  which was nowhere near high enough to affect menstrual nonsense btw other than maybe make it a little wonky.  it’s the whole “long-term no hormones weak bones” thing which, makes no sense to me given eunuchs have always existed

but yeah. that was through the center for excellence in transgender health’s doctor, maddie deutsch, buuut i could only see her through ucsf’s women’s center… which despite having gq and man gender options, multiply misgendered me including on envelopes of paperwork to my house thanks, and one time the receptionist took Initiative and Asked me if i was Sure the Gender was Right on my Forms. i hate.

…this is.  maybe partially about what you asked about.  sorry!  i hate doctors.  take an advocate with you, god i wish i had more often.

[epochryphal]

an intersection: im probably demisexual. i want sex but it bores me, and i cant connect with most sexual images out of dysphoria and deminess. however, being kin with dirk strider can jump that gap. i can get off when im being dirk, but i really struggle if im being me/not-dirk. yeah like. being kin/being ace/being allo. all the same thing somehow. (i hate the ace/allo dichotomy)

dichotomy!  a good word, yes, thank you.  also, relatable.

it’s interesting how dysphoria works with kin stuff in different ways?  for me, sometimes it amps it up, and sometimes it totally dials it down.  (and different kinds of dysphoria, too, right, body-sex-characteristics or body-non/human-characteristics or body-something-else or gender-perception-by-others or all sorts of things.)

and yeah, ace/allo was… never supposed to be a sharp divide, grey-aces have always been around (and accused of sexualizing allos, because by thinking we’re “less sexual” than they are we’re hyperbolizing them… which is faulty reasoning?  even if “most” people “aren’t that sexual,” there isn’t harm in finding affirmation in a word and way to find community to talk about similar experiences, and using an identity word isn’t innately passing a judgment on people who don’t – which is a behavior issue in that many people do then pass judgment!  but that’s not an issue of the word/experience, that’s… an issue of people.)

(similarly i think the rigidity around Kin/Not Kin and the here-are-these-other-things and describe-yourself-correctly is, self-defeating and… people will self-select into the word/community that feels right and helps them find like-minded folks with similar experiences.  that’s, how this goes.)

but basically - yeah!  things being tied together and related and kinda messy kinda weirdly tidy, and.  mindframes and mindstates and models and narratives and, learning how to maneuver those as is best useful for you.  hella.  thank you for sharing!

[bandit-o-s-usb]

aight until I get bigger tits I'm done shaving I can't with this bullshit

[bandit-o-s-usb]

I think alot of feeling of visual worth(attractiveness n such) isn't necessarily related to visual elements of say looking in a mirror, but closer to the physical sensation my body is giving me. Like I could be looking aces m but if my skin is being fucky or my sinuses are dying then I'll feel ugly.

[epochryphal]

i’m trying to remember my various characters tags (houka, shiro, anakin, peridot, dirk, john) where i…do get dysphoric about how the characters are portrayed, but they’re not me the same way i’m glitch?

they’re…more like facets. that surface and submerge, are salient and fade back.  they’re useful and pointing to them is a useful way to give people information about me.  but they’re not every fiber of my being

idk if that’s what synpath or ‘hearted is?

[epochryphal]

oh boy let’s talk species dysphoria  (#suicidality ment, #alcohol, #institutionalization)

“do you consider yourself to be less than 100% human” and “if you could become 0% human, would you” (source)

normally i love percentages.  i’ll apply percents to any decision.  how hungry am i.  how certain am i that x is a good idea.

but here i shudder at considering exact percentages.

“less than 100%” yes by far.  “become 0%” (am i not already?  what would Becoming entail?)... yes.  yes, please.

It’s looking in the mirror and desperately trying to figure out something, anything you can do to make you look more like yourself. It’s being profoundly embarrassed about the way you look, move and act, because your face isn’t your face and it can’t ever represent you, hating, hating, hating the way people look at your face and see something you’re not. (source)

hahahahaha.  yeah.  me:

it’s not remembering you have a body, until you bump into something hard and are jolted into forced recognition.  it’s not being able to pinpoint anything wrong with your reflection, it’s just not yours.  it’s hunching inward upset that you’re “visible” and that people read you, read emotions, read all sorts of markers you didn’t put there to be read.

it’s running out of ideas for transition, for body modification, for goals to work toward and dream of and postpone death for, and feeling utterly lost.  it’s knowing you’ll never ever ever be seen for what you are at first, second, third glance, or even when you explicitly explain in detail.

it’s telling a few chosen people, then watching as they forget or don’t integrate into how they talk, about you or in general, beyond more than one or two words they watch out and apologize for using.

it’s drinking to merge with this bizarre flesh body, to stop caring, to feel embodied and dancing and moving for once without noticing, to exist present and here and stop thinking about what people are seeing and what a video would capture and what this avatar looks like

it’s getting sent to the psych ward for feeling unreal, getting admitted and being all sunshine and rainbows and everyone asks why the hell you’re there and you tell them and they say “ah, so it’s all a mask” and you can’t...really say they’re wrong but they’re not right?  it’s being a goddamn reactive AI adapting to input and producing the “right” pleasing output bc that’s how you interface, right, and it’s automatic anyway, trying to discontinue that process results in Error

it’s being told you’re just coping with trauma that affected you deeper than you think, you’re just having a crazy flareup, it’s your ocd magical thinking, this is what happens when you let yourself think, stop thinking and just exist in this body that’s YOU.  it’s not fitting criteria and not having past memories and not trusting memory in general and doubting and doubting and reality ceases to have meaning

it’s “sure this is probably due to brain stuff like, uh, being autistic, and trauma stuff and developmental stuff and homeschool and more, but why does that change anything about what i get to call it and where i get to bring it and how i get to engage with it and who i get to say i have commonality with?”

it’s “is this all just me being nonbinary and unable to fit that into humanity?  if i was magically perfectly recognized and accommodated as nonbinary and autistic, would this go away?” and “so what? that’s literally impossible, this is what i actually deal with”

it’s linguistics dysphoria and cringing at statements about humanity as a foundation for connectedness and respect, it’s the way language should be fixable more so than physicality but it resists, it still demands such difficult restructuring, it still requires others’ cooperation

it’s “hey, you don’t get to call my body anything but non-binary” clashing with “hey, you don’t get to call my body anything but nonhuman” clashing with “i am not my body this is not me” clashing with “so what if i’m crazy? you still need to respect me” clashing with “is this Bad and Symptom and Psychosis and does it Need Medicating and how do you even ever decide” clashing and clashing and clashing

it’s final-layer, deepest-down, least likely to request accommodations much less share what it feels like, ultra vulnerable ultra crazy.  it’s never being sure if i should be working harder on ~self-acceptance~ and embodiment, if i’m sabotaging myself by letting me think this way

it’s faulty metaphors and analogies, aliens and ai and robots, it’s not being able to condense into one particular Recognizable identity, it’s giving up and settling into the vagueness of glitch.

....file all this under: reasons i don’t give a damn about the otherkin police and their checklists of propriety without listening to how people know themselves

[epochryphal]

I just wanted to say *thank you so much*, because I've never heard anyone defending "I'm squicked/alienated/made dysphoric by being called human" before and it means so much to hear someone say it. It's a low-key thing for me, it doesn't grate on me the same way it does that people don't see my body as the right species, the way it does that I don't have the right body parts, but it's important and it never gets heard and. It just meant a lot to me to hear that. Thank you.

[epochryphal]

thoughts from acupuncture: i wish i could lmao. get this fucking thing off me

[epochryphal]

[epochryphal]

aw thanks!! nah i don't need tagging. just an fyi why i'm not reblogging this stuff. plus i'm good with actual selfies, it's more all this meta about them as a movement that anyone can participate in (but ofc shouldn't in ways appropriative of blackout) it's just bizarre and a lil alienating, plus i do know and see other non-binary folks doing selfies and sometimes being misgendered, and it's like wow brave iiiii cannot. ((also humanity feels but who's counting))

[epochryphal]

ah btw i am reading all the posts about selfie days and the antiblackness in springing off of blackout, and i agree

i just… don’t reblog or focus on them esply the trans one, bc i personally am really dysphoric abt selfies bc gender and zero control over strangers seeing/assuming, and it’s bizarre to be reminded that selfies are so widespread and “easy” as community self-affirmation