#it's less of a spectrum than a venn diagram but THE WHOLE THING is that Don Draper is jon hamm's most famous role

[takiki16]

are u entering a jon hamm phase?

[tooangrymustinternet]

For my cisgender friends, followers, and allies:

This is a long post. It's long because what I need you all to understand is complicated and nuanced, so it cannot be summarized in a short post if I want you to actually understand. Please bear with me, and please read the whole thing if you can, as I will consider that an act of love, allyship, and/or community. (Skip the glossary if you don't need it of course.) ____________________ Glossary of Terms in this Post

♡ Binarism (noun) - This is a specific form of sexism and transphobia that elevates binary genders (men and women) above all others. As of this posting, binarism is currently so pervasive that most people don't realize they are participating in it.

♡ Binary [genders] (adj) - This term refers to men and to women, regardless of cis or trans.

♡ Cis/Cisgender (adj) - Cis is a shortening of cisgender (sometimes written as cis gender). Cisgender people are people whose gender identity, sex assigned at birth, gender presentation, and chosen/performed gender role all line up in one neat little package. Mainstream western culture likes to pretend that all people are cisgender.

♡ Nonbinary (adj) - This term refers to the entire category of people who are not strictly 100% men or 100% women. Sometimes it refers to people who are somewhere between the two; sometimes it refers to people who are totally off of that spectrum and have genders entirely separate from it; there are a lot of possibilities, but the bottom line is that this is a category of genders which intersects with the word "transgender" like a Venn diagram.

♡ Segender (adj) - This term refers to someone whose gender is not recognized within their own culture. It is not a specific gender, but rather describes the state of a person's gender just like "cisgender" and "transgender" are not specific genders. In Western cultures, many people of nonbinary genders are segender. Other cultures are more likely to recognize one or more nonbinary gender.

♡ Sexism (noun) - prejudice, stereotyping, and/or discrimination in thought or action, on the basis of either sex or gender. Sexism is, as most people reading this know, highly pervasive. Our society is actively working to correct this.

♡ Trans/Transgender (adj) - Trans is a shortening of transgender (sometimes written as trans gender). Transgender people are people whose gender identities do not match the gender assigned to them at birth. This is a loose term; there are people who technically fit this definition but do not identify as cis or trans.

♡ Transphobia (noun) - a form of sexism which raises cis people and/or harms trans people. Transphobia is pervasive, but as of this posting, it is finally being talked about a lot more so things finally have a chance to start getting better. ____________________ PART ONE: Pervasiveness of Binarism

Binarism is pervasive in our culture. The idea that everyone is either a man or a woman is simultaneously false, and something our culture has steeped itself in. From binary check boxes on dating apps and doctor intake forms, to binary restrooms, to phrases like "Ladies and gentlemen," or "boys and girls," the concept that other people exist too has been purged from our cultural collection of colloquialisms, constructs, and more.

This means that the number of segender genders here is pretty darn high. It also means that binarism is one of the most common forms of transphobia. And that, my dear friends and community members who have decided to read this essay, is the first main point I need you to understand or the rest of what I have to say in this won't make sense. Binarism is a specific form of erasure and bias related so strongly to transphobia and sexism that a lot of people refer to it as a subset of those things. It is the erasure of the existence of nonbinary people like me to the point of not being able to safely use dating apps or public restrooms because they don't exist for us. And that's just the built environment; I haven't even begun to touch on being treated with respect by the people we interact with, in a culture where strangers will almost certainly never get our genders right.

Right now, as I write this, I can't handle talking about how afraid I am of gender-based violence and murder or the very real reasons I have for those fears, so I am going to skip that part.

I don't think I know how to describe the sheer depth and breadth of binarism people like me deal with on a daily basis, so I ask that you consider that it is similar to any other form of sexism in that it happens All The Time. Every time I want to use the bathroom at work, I have to walk to a different building because the restrooms are segregated and none of the ones for people like me are available in my building. Exactly once in my life, a stranger assumed the correct gender for me. The rest of the time, it's a day-long mix of Sirs and Ma'ams from well-meaning people who I know are trying to be polite despite their massive failures at it. There's a lot more, but I want to move on to my next point. Just know that binarism hurts me and others like me several times per day. That's just life for people like me in western cultures. Sucks to be segender in that sense. ____________________ PART TWO: On Being Silent

I work 2 jobs, both in academia. I commute with a mixture of car, bus, train, and walking on most days. This means I run into a lot of people. Almost every time I do, gender comes up in a bad way due to the pervasive nature of binarism. When this happens, I have a variety of choices.

Do I correct and educate the person? Do I stay silent? Do I just sort of laugh and make a joke about it in what is often a vain hope that they'll realize it's actually a softened callout? The answer varies dramatically in terms of the situation, my mood, and my energy level.

I often stay silent with these one on one encounters simply because I don't have the energy to deal with it. Yet, every time I do that, I find myself kicking myself for it mentally for hours after the encounter. Why? I have had some variation of this conversation countless times:

Me: **attempts to educate**

Person: "My friend is trans and I said this in front of them, and they didn't mind, so I don't get what your problem is."

Me: "Your trans friend said this was okay?"

Person: "No, but they didn't say anything, so they don't have a problem with it."

Trans people often say nothing. Some of us have these education conversations several times per day, some of us opt to never have them. Different people find different things stressful, so some trans or nonbinary people are more likely to ask strangers to change transphobic or binarist behavior than people they know well, while others are more likely to have that conversation with friends than with strangers. But in just about all cases, it takes energy. That energy is not always there, and it's not uncommon for someone to have already reached their quota for these kinds of conversations for the day before you do or say something transphobic or binarist in front of them without even realizing it.

Someone staying silent in front of you does not mean that what you did is acceptable. ____________________ PART THREE: On Speaking Up

Everyone is different, but I know that for me, I'm far more likely to speak up in a group setting than I am in a one on one setting. This is for a variety reasons that go well beyond the simple fact that it is also simply less frightening and stressful to me personally. These other reasons culminate in the end result of a lot less work for myself and others like me.

If someone does something transphobic or binarist and I stay silent, as I have shown above, I know they will think that I think their action is just fine and may even use my silence to justify their actions to others when called out later on the same thing. This is (obviously) damaging to the entire goal of reducing the ambient levels of transphobia and binarism, but it becomes far more so when this happens in a group setting. An entire group relearns the wrong cultural lesson when transphobia and binarism go unchecked. Instead, I say something, and that way the entire group can learn together. Because it is absolutely a learning process.

This goes well in spaces where accountability and intentional reduction of social harms is part of the norm. In these spaces, things like "hey that was kinda racist," or "could you change this so it is not transphobic" are met with thanks for the opportunity to self-correct, discussion for the sake of learning, and apologies. These discussions allow everyone in the group to learn the same lesson together and support each other in this learning process. I like this because it allows me to learn from others' mistakes as well as my own instead of continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again. I also like this because it's a LOT more efficient at reducing those ambient levels of transphobia and binarism I was talking about than talking to one person at a time.

I keep having the same exact education conversations over and over again on a nearly daily basis, so I am absolutely certain that these group conversations help a lot more people learn the same lesson than me putting the same amount of energy into a private conversation and only helping one person learn how to stop being an accidental asshole. Besides, then I can stop watching the faces of the other trans people in any given group fall in marginalized silence. It breaks my heart to watch that.

But anyway, this only works in these groups where people want to do better and care more about accountability in terms of how their actions impact others than they do about appearing to be perfect. In other spaces, it causes a shit show. ____________________ PART FOUR: My Request

So, if you have made it this far, you finally have the context for what I request:

If I or someone else lets you know that something you did or said was transphobic or binarist and asks you to make a change, please keep in mind that speaking up at all is often a fearful thing for us. We are afraid of physical and verbal violence, of losing social capital, of being told we are being dramatic or otherwise not being taken seriously, of losing your friendship, and more. If we thought you didn't want to learn or do better, we wouldn't bother. In that sense, it's a compliment, even though it feels uncomfortable if you aren't accustomed to accountability culture (and sometimes even then). Those of us who are accustomed to accountability-oriented spaces can forget that this isn't the assumption a lot of people have.

Take feedback to heart, and if the conversation starts publicly and you're able to keep it there, please do so as an act of allyship. Transparency and accountability are acts of allyship when it comes to these things because they become agents of cultural shift.

Thanks for reading my essay, I hope it makes sense. Again, questions are welcome in the comments.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND POWER

But it's not straightforward to find these, because there is less demand for them. In fact, choosing a more powerful language probably decreases the size of users' data well, nothing easy, we knew we might as well stop there. The Apple II was launched just two years later. At any given time there tends to be done by bad programmers is choosing the wrong platform. Many of the applications we get are imitations of some existing company. It wouldn't be a compliment in most organizations to call someone scrappy. And most founders who've been burned by such disputes probably had misgivings, which they suppressed, when they started the company. So if there are more of those to be had each year, the best pickers should have more hits. Some we helped with strategy questions, like what to patent, and what it means in other languages, of course people want the wrong things. You're not just looking for good ideas, so long as it's wrong in a way that leads to other questions. At Viaweb now Yahoo Store, we raised some eyebrows among VCs and potential acquirers by using Lisp.

And then of course it's going to be a luxury item, into a commodity. Programmers and system administrators have to worry about this. One of the most dangerous of which are in your own head—will come from some little startup. If you looked in the head of a 1950s auto executive, the attitude must have been: sure, give 'em whatever they ask for, so long as it's wrong in a way a question doesn't. But I think founders will increasingly have the upper hand. Northern Italy in 800, off warlords would steal it. Since most released bugs involved borderline cases, the users who are ready to try new things, partly because they're more flexible, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the best problems to solve are ones that affect you personally.

There are multiple forces at work, some of which will increase them. This concept is a simple one and yet seeing it as a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. But it should be. The thin end of the spectrum, where you don't specify the recipients. But we know that's the wrong metric. The good news is, there's also a good chance the person at the next table could help you in some way. If you study conversations, you find there is a trick you could use if you're not. I am interested, but we thought very carefully before we released software onto those servers.

Inc or class foo: def __init__ self, s: self. DH5 we still sometimes see deliberate dishonesty, as when someone picks out minor points of an argument and refutes those. And it is a standard. There are usually a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people in a position of power. Google, Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft how they'd feel about two candidates, both 24, with equal ability, one who'd tried to start a startup and think they seem likely to succeed at all, and you'd have a working computer. Isn't it wiser, sometimes, not to be the most fun way to come up with ideas for startups? Can you imagine anything more painful for a hacker?

But even those they use no more than the definition implies. That's the whole point of technology. Most we helped with strategy questions, like what to patent, and what it means is that if someone is wise, all you can see the two side by side that you notice how little overlap there is. I don't think there's an answer. Don't be intimidated. They don't expect a newly launched product to do everything; it just has to be finite, and the main reason large organizations have so many meetings. You don't have to worry about the business model from the beginning. And it's true, the benefit that specific manager could derive from the forces I've described is near zero. Actually what they need to get things done. The programmers become system administrators. In most adults this curiosity dries up entirely. By the time we were bought by Yahoo, the customer support people were moved far away from the programmers.

[scriptlgbt]

Hey, I was wondering if you could help me with my sci fi story. I have an asexual transgender MC and I was wondering if you could go into detail on how they are like. What does gender dysphoria truly feel like? Does it always lead to self hatred? And any other things that I would NEED to know to not misrepresent the community. And can you please tell me a lot of stuff on asexuals as well? Thank you ~ keep doing what your doing

What Gender Dysphoria Is Like

(Personal Example)

It’s really different for everyone, but gender dysphoria for me is like the emotional surroundings of putting your shoes on backwards and having to go around like that all day. And people noticing it, drawing attention to it, and regarding you as the person with shoes on backwards. 

But it also feels like nakedness, in a way you didn’t prepare for. Like if you’re sick and haven’t showered for a week and people refer to you solely by your body hair.

I feel like a step behind everyone who is cis, like there was something puberty was supposed to get me to but never did. (And that’s why I’m doing it again, haha.)

Overall I feel neutral about myself and my body. I live here and I know I have to accept it, because with my personality my not accepting something as important as my body would not be anything survivable right now. But sometimes when I feel really bad I can’t go outside. It’s gotten easier since I’ve started living with just other trans people, because I know they see me and refer to me correctly and it’s gotten me a lot of better base level confidence. 

We also make jokes that make it easier to cope, particularly ones that dismantle how great cis straight folks think they have it. (”Being nonbinary can suck nearly all the time, but at least I’m not dating straight men.”) There’s a lot of good community does when everything else is terrible.

I’m also motivated by gender euphoria though, like, I love my voice and how it feels now, I love my muscles and the reshaping of my hips with hormones. The weird lumpiness of my body feels more homey than it used to. One day, I’ll get to go outside without wearing an underlayer of compression gear, and that’s going to be rad. I’m going to put flowers in my beard and make sculptural art with my mustache. I’m going to live in this body my whole life, and bedazzle it with piercings and tattoos. I’m going to braid my hair when it gets down to my hips. I live here and I will learn to love it even if I have to make some alterations for that. 

Some days, I do love it. Most days, I am neutral, summing up the things I like and don’t as being overall okay. Some days, little things trigger a spiral of bad things.

Asexuality

I am also asexual. 

My main beef with most asexual representation is that asexuals are almost universally painted as being completely without any libido ever and chosing to never have sex ever. 

I’m not going to say that I speak for the experience for every asexual person, but these are definitely separate parts of a venn diagram. Asexuality means that someone does not experience sexual attraction (or is on that spectrum where this label feels most fitting). 

I think most people who are openly asexual tend to fit the other stereotypes of not being interested in sex, because it is easier to just say, “I’m asexual,” and leave it at that without having to explain, “I’m asexual but let me explain what that involves for me.”

I’m an asexual person who has sex.. (I’m cupiosexual, specifically, but probably more on the grey side of asexual.) My motivations for sex involve my libido, a partner with a libido, and both of us being down to share the experience of it. I’ve explained this in the past as being similar to the motivations people have to jerk off. Do those who do it, do it because they’re attracted to themselves? Are there other motivations involved?

Ultimately the best way to make sure your representation is decent is just to make sure that your character is framed in an individual way. Their experience is their experience. Labels are made to define experiences (or lack thereof) rather than the other way around. 

Make sure to be specific about it being defined by lack of attraction, rather than lack of sex or something else. It may be a part of your character’s experience, but it’s not what defines asexuality itself. It’s just in supplement for a lot of people, and doesn’t make anyone more or less who they say they are.

- mod nat

[rachelkulagodfrey-blog]

Minimizing My Creative Interests: My Greatest [and Worst] Magic Trick Yet

Originally published on March 17, 2019.

I want to start this post off by naming 5 things I know to be certain in this lifetime.

Objectivity is an ugly myth.

We may not deserve Solange, but we need her.

I need to feel emotionally supported during sex to have fun.

I’d be a hideously different bitch if it weren’t for Fueled by Ramen.

I’ll die someday.

2 and 4 were pretty easy to realize. 5 wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes. 1 and 3 took a lot of hard conversations and arguing with myself at 3 A.M to fully grasp.

Imagining a Fueled by Ramen-less life is kind of terrifying…let’s actually change things up and think of this as a Venn Diagram. Throw 4 in with 5, too.

If you’re reading this, you probably didn’t come here for math and/or logic puzzles. As an ex-middle school mathlete, I can’t help but incorporate it into this new craft. You can take the girl out of the “Want Sum of This?” community, but you can’t take the “I Won’t Learn Healthy Social Skills Until Age 30” out of the girl.

(I looked older at 13 than I do at 22.)

I wanted to start this post off by naming 5 things I know to be certain as a method of grounding myself. I left school for break a few days early after reaching my self-doubting capacity (see the last post for the low-down), and have since kept my interactions limited to my immediate family and friends. I’ve been relaxing, rejuvenating, and manifesting. I’ve been feeling and doing okay. YUH. The extended time away from people and this beautiful platform has granted me the necessary time to flesh out my priorities. Why did I start this blog? Why do I write? To which relationships, projects, and passions am I giving the most time and energy? To which am I not?

I love creating. I love building critical discussion spaces, narrative pieces, poems, self-portraits, stories-through-pictures, soundscapes, mind-numbing blowjob experiences. I love it all. Every time I’m doing creative work along these lines, I know that I’m putting my heart into something that can genuinely benefit me and the people who may see/feel it. Spiritually, creatively, sexually, and otherwise. Knowing all of this helps me foresee a future in which I flex my creativity for a living. But every single time I get ready to take tangible, intentional steps in this direction, I stumble over my own lack of conviction. I’m scared of exploring all of my passions in-depth, and it’s killing my storytelling ability slowly.

As someone who wants to create for her people, I have to really think about what I’m saying when I say, “I don’t care what people think about me.” When people act up and project their insecurities onto me, I have to think it through for a minute. Normally, I decide it’s not worth me spending extra time on. It still informs how I move. When people send out kind messages about the work I’m doing and trying to do, it encourages me to keep going. It informs how I move. When I say, “I don’t care what people think about me,” I’m trying to remind myself and others that it’s natural – inevitable, really – to converse with the energy people send your way, but what you can’t let it do is consume you. I can’t let thoughts of people’s feedback, no matter where it falls on a spectrum of “constructive”, put me in a position where I am only thinking about what they may want, instead of a combination of what we all may want and need.

I’m full of dick-sucking anecdotes and tongue-in-cheek pop culture reads. But this platform and this work excite the hell out of me because I can explore these storytelling routes among a shit ton of others. I just need to give myself the full permission to actually do so.

Consider this post to be me doing exactly that. It’s also me begging you to allow yourself to do the same. And if you don’t give a fuck about what I think, take the advice from Solange: she recently talked about how difficult it was to expand on her production, filmmaking, and visual artistry as a whole when people have boxed her in as “just a musician.” She notes how there are things that she knows that she can’t do, but others that she loves doing and wants to grow in, like producing. This, in turn, created room for her spectacular curatorial abilities. WHICH WE CAN SEE SHINE ALL THE WAY THE FUCK THROUGH ON THE NEW ALBUM. YES! WE! CAN! BIH! A multifaceted H-Town baddie. She cannot be stopped.

Where were we? Ah. Yes.

Stay-in-your-lane creative culture can make you feel like you have to stick to one medium, to one rigid path. It makes you feel like you have to be absolutely perfect at whatever you’re doing, no matter what your interest level may be. I love blogging as much as I love writing and sharing poetry. I’ve been neglecting my creative writing out of a fear of judgment. I’ve put a halt on curating because of my fear of another low turnout to an amazing show. But I know all of these crafts teach me so much about my identity as an artist, from different – but not mutually exclusive – angles. I know it’s a matter of becoming more conscious of my audiences, and about putting more into what I’m doing without shaming myself the entire time. I wouldn’t even be fucking “creating” had it not been for my poetic origins.

“Poetic origins” makes me sound like an asshole. But in a few years time, I’ll probably be someone who eats ass and enjoys it. I’m just setting myself up for a cheeky future. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I’ve made a private list of creative promises to myself. These are moves that I don’t want to be rushed. If there’s anything we can take away from Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho, it’s that “quantity>quality” makes for awkward mediocrity. Oop. I don’t want to rush the process, but I want to push myself. I want to let myself know that I can create whatever the fuck I want to create whenever it feels right and that no one can tell me anything that will halt me in my tracks. I’ve even been downplaying how much I love writing these blog posts and doing interviews for The Bay Leaf Archive. One thing I will share, though, is that I want to be more consistent and post more frequently on C&S. I’ve got a lot of fun ideas that I want to see come to fruition. I’m ready to make them happen. 

If I decide one day that I want to go and make some studio recordings to accompany my poems because it feels right and necessary to do so, I’ll fucking do it. If I want to pick up a camera and start learning more about photography and portraiture, I absolutely will. I don’t really have money like that so the camera would be probably be borrowed… but… iPhone 6s camera is alright… I mean…you get what I mean… ANYWAY. 

...I’ll probably pass up on drawing. 

At the risk of sounding like a white parent who used to “do pot”, I’m ready to let my passions and interests guide the fuck out of me. I owe it to myself. No more “lmao”s to downplay how I actually feel. I can’t scream Megan Thee Stallion lyrics morning, noon, and night and not own up to what’s coming out of my mouth.

Clink clink, friends. It’s time to explore.