Reblogged agentletragedy
in some unremarkable corner of suburbia an ant picks up a bit of gravel and makes an imperceptible slice into a grilledcheese crust. the hand of the doomsday clock ticks forward another second
okay now. spent like 34 hours near-bedbound, much of it barely drawing breath, waking up from 8hrs sleep w/ my heart hammering. worst fatigue crash i ever had maybe? radically redrawing my life. no being upright for over about two minutes. need to recover very thoroughly. the really really tough thing is nobody to bring you food, that's a bastard. equally tough is nobody to sit with you and hold your hand when you just do not know.
mentally composing your emails. "hey, don't feel guilty, you did everything you could for me. these months have been great. by the standards of my life, even the suicidal parts were great. If I die, I didn't want to." Imagine leaving that. It really does feel different to when suicide is close. Fearing for your life for other reasons, even a little, is different. It's not like suicide and it's not like CPTSD's futureless doom and it's not even like losing almost half your blood during surgery.
It really gets to you when you can't breathe. Even the sight of your own torn flesh doesn't quite go there. I didn't go to the hospital just because it got better two days ago and I think I know what it was. Someone I greatly respect told me to go. My mother has a heart condition, I could too. I write this and imagine it's the last thing all of you ever read from me just because I'm not afraid. It registers to me as a sort of inconvenience unless I tease out my own emotions like that. I suppose if it happens again I dial 999: sane enough?
Reblogged
“Politically correct sexuality is a paradoxical concept. One of the most deeply held opinions in feminism is that women should be autonomous and self-directed in defining their sexual desire, yet when a woman says “This is my desire,” feminists rush in to say, “No, no, it is the prick in your head; women should not desire that act.” But we do not yet know enough about what women– any women– desire. The real problem here is that we stopped asking questions too early in the lesbian and feminist movement, and rushed to erect what appeared to be answers into the formidable and rigid edifice that we have now. Our contemporary lack of curiosity also affects our view of the past. We don’t ask butch-femme women who they are; we tell them. We don’t explore the social life of working-class lesbian bars in the 1940’s and 1950’s; we simply assert that all those women were victims. Our supposed answers closed our ears and stopped our analysis. Questions and answers about lesbian lives that deviate from the feminist model of the 1970’s strike like a shock wave against the movement’s foundation, yet this new wave of questioning is an authentic one, coming from women who have helped create the feminist and lesbian movement that they are now challenging into new growth. If we close down exploration, we will be forcing some women once again to live their sexual lives in a land of shame and guilt, only this time they will be haunted by the realization that it was not the patriarchal code they had failed, but the creed of their own sisters who said they came in love. Curiosity builds bridges between women and between the present and past; judgement builds the power if some over others. Curiosity is not trivial; it is respect one life pays to another. It is a largeness of mind and heart that refuses to be bound by decorum or by desperation. It is hardest to keep alive in the times it is most needed, the times of hatred, of instability, of attack. Surely these are such times.”
— Joan Nestle, The Persistent Desire; A Femme-Butch Reader, 1992
Reblogged
hey anyone know if chronic fatigue crashes are supposed to make it highly effortful to breathe and leave you both falling asleep and waking up to your heart hammering like you've been sprinting? I keep surviving this but it gets a bit worrying when it barely relents for nigh-on 30 hours of bedrest.
oh fuck it i'll go to the hospital. screw you, parental medical neglect!
Reblogged
anyways you know when you’re talking to someone who’s nuts but you adore them and want very badly to reach them in their madness because you know exactly how alone they are in there and by some miracle they get to talking about the personal delusions that shepherded them through the worst of the worst of the nightmare and you realize that by taking on the language and imagery and internal logic of those delusions you can speak to them in a way that makes emotional sense in a deep and profound way that contributes to them momentarily feeling less alienated and abandoned, I think you should try it sometime, it opens some weird doors.
Reblogged
idk sometimes i kinda wonder if such a thing as a unified "trans community" even exists. and i *definitely* wonder if such a thing as a unified "queer community" is real.
I think categorically no, this is a misleading concept whenever it is invoked. It's also a very political issue
I think there are trans people who are in community with other trans people local to them and also in contact with people who are far away in other local trans communities, and from my experience it's easy to feel like you're "in the trans community" when this happens, but it's not real, you're just in your local scene or clique
It's also a dangerous concept because when people mistake their particular friendship group for "the trans community" they also mistake not being friends with someone any more for "exiling them from The Community". This inevitably leads to people talking with these vibes about how to resolve relatively minor inter-community conflicts:
It's (I really hope) easier for people to understand how wrong-headed this notion is if I said like "the black community". It's actually othering language that implies a sort of equal-but-separate existence of different communities of different racial identities, or sexual or gender identities, or disability statuses, or mental health diagnoses.
To see this for what it is you have to look at it epistemologically(how knowledge is structured, how we know things, from the greek episteme for "knowledge"): The categories of white, black, asian, etc, or the categories of straight, gay, cis, trans, or the categories that people are put into by mental health diagnosis or body type or age are all taxonomies invented and maintained by people who define themselves into the comfiest category. "the black community" doesn't exist because whiteness (and by extension blackness) was invented by white people to sell more genocides. There are underlying real characteristics, shared cultural histories, affordances and class traumas, but the categories themselves and by extension the idea of monolithic communities for each category are a weapon used to commit epistemic violence.
Men and women, for example, are concepts used to describe and classify the human population into roughly two halves to create foundations ideologically for patriarchy. The class of woman is socially constructed, but misogyny is a shared class trauma among feminised people, access to abortion is a shared struggle among people who can get pregnant, feminist history helps undo the hermeneutic injustice that patriarchy does to us, but feminist history isn't a history of women, it's a history of how patriarchy invented a men-only history and systematically excluded women from it while repressing, killing, raping, persecuting and enslaving us. Definitionally, "women's spaces", the need from which they arise, the legislation and creation of them and the ongoing gatekeeping of them, entirely runs on patriarchal logic even where they exist to protect from patriarchal violence.
The oppositional approach here would be to try to tear up all taxonomies and endlessly pursue the declassificaition of everything, "I don't see colour, I never assume anyone's pronouns, nobody is disabled just differently abled" etc. but this ignores the world-as-is and does fuck all to effect change. It also ignores the real needs of people in different groups and ignores that probably human beings like sorting things into different kinds of things and will probably always try to do it in one way or another.
So here's the rub - trans community that is defined around the identity of trans as opposed to the cisgender binary under patriarchy is playing their game by their rules, unless it is based on material solidarity and moving toward total liberation, and if it is an organised community moving toward liberation it must find solidarity with other oppressed groups, and then it isn't just trans any more.
So as for groups of trans people hanging out because they find it easier to relate to other people who have transitioned, yes there are dozens of those in every major city in the US and Europe and plenty elsewhere besides. As for some kind of unified and monolithic "trans community" it can't exist sort of by definition.
Reblogged probablyasocialecologist
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thinkin bout thatcher after reading extensively about the history of the english welfare state and the current political moment. budget ghouls talking about obliterating pensions next, endless decline, endless worse everything. the problem with cuts is that you eventually run out of other people's safety. like this feels so clearly not sustainable for much longer.
Reblogged gatheringbones
But even if the trans body somehow were perfected, through luck or futuristic technology, the stories you’d still want to tell would only make sense when accompanied by revelations. There is no surgery to change the narrative of your life, or the stories from which it is woven.
There will always be something about you. Not everyone will appreciate that something.
- “Working with Nothing” by Elizabeth Marston, from Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices, edited by Kevin Manders and Elizabeth Marston
Reblogged gatheringbones
Several years ago, a boy and a girl were walking side by side somewhere in the place between death and birth. They were good friends. The boy was delicate and sensitive and spoke softly. His deepest wish was to be beautiful, and to live a life filled with love. The girl was brave and free-spirited and spoke with deliberate confidence. Her wish was to walk wherever her heart called her. They were such good friends that they decided to travel to Earth together, and to help each other find their hearts' wishes there. With an innocent smile, the boy said, "I'll always be here for you until you find the freedom you seek. You'll always have my love." The girl was overjoyed and said, "If you're ever down I'll be right here to pick you up, sweet boy, and if you're in danger I'll protect you!" They pondered how to keep their promises. "Living on Earth might be tricky," said the boy. "There are so many beautiful people and places there, but also confusion and sometimes terrible violence. What if we get separated? How would we survive?" "Those things aren't all bad," the girl replied. "How can I ever learn to be free unless I look danger squarely in the face? Unless I search for clarity and answers from within? And if you want to be beautiful, it's not enough to sit around in pleasant places. You can show the beauty of your character when things get really difficult by the things you say and do." They decided to live together in one body. The girl said, "The thing you need to remember is that neither of us can be happy if the other is sad. We are responsible for each other. Unless you show your beauty and find the courage to love, I will never be free. And you'll only learn to blossom through my help, and my strength." Down together they descended, and through the oneness of their intentions they became one being. In one human heart they placed their many feelings and desires, and set themself the task of bringing it into a state of harmony on Earth.
untitled by Luna Rangjung Yeshe, from "Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices", edited by Kevin Manders and Elizabeth Marston
in this culture its kind of all strength, there's the strength to argue your point against all-comers and the strength to realize you're wrong and put pride aside. weakness is categorically without virtue. to get awful taoist about it, what if weakness is less badness and more flexibility, humility, etc? something that is strong all the way through is surely both numb and relentless. you can say oh but strength is persistence through pain, not numbness! okay well yes its relational, that's both things at once. if we begin on equal strength and you end up in agony and I do not, my strength will exceed yours. i would say that strength and weakness are then relational, like a taoist would. i would also say there is value in both things, like a taoist would.
Reblogged
That is a confirmed sighting of lynx with pictures in my village, although us villagers have known for years - there have been roe deer killed in the woods, the golden eagles have come back to eat their carcasses, tracks of large cats have been seen in the snow - but now it is finally confirmed with pictures. Otter, Beaver, golden eagle, lynx, all back in the last ten years. Speed the return of the wolf and the bear from North.
Things are not quite as hopeless as they seem.
Reblogged horridbeaftf
"I Am a Mother in Gaza… And This Is the Mother’s Day"
Being a mother, Mother’s Day doesn’t mean gifts and celebrations to me; it means safety for my children. How can I celebrate while holding them under a sky that rains bombs instead of flowers? No one came to say, “Happy Mother’s Day,” and my children didn’t run to me with their colorful drawings. Instead, they ran to me in terror, clinging to me as if I were their last shield from death.
All I wish for on this day is just one night where they can sleep without fear, without being awakened by the sound of explosions or collapsing roofs above them. I want to see them grow in peace, laugh without fear, and live the childhood they deserve.
Is that too much to ask?
We are so close to our goal,Help us,please. It's just $125 to get $15.000
If you would like to help me and my children donation link is here
Vetted by @bilal-salah0
Reblogged autogyne-redacted
I talk a big game abt herbalism & medicine so like as an accessible entry point that's immediately applicable to a lot of ppls lives I'm gonna plug Nicole Rose's herbalism, ptsd and traumatic stress course. It is self-paced, sliding scale to $0,000 (no asking no explaining no means testing, just sign up) and i think it is pretty solid. I can't say she does or talks about everything exactly as I would or that we're fully in alignment re: theories of trauma, but it's incredibly worth the price of admission :p and will give you a good working understanding of a buncha common eclectic-western herbal concepts!
Nicole is an ex-prisoner and political organizer in the UK who spends her life doing frontline support for people facing incarceration and political repression; she's the author of the prisoners herbal, an entry level guide to herbalism as a way of claiming healthcare access & bodily autonomy for people in prison (especially people being medically neglected, which might as well be synonymous with incarceration). This book costs money to ppl on the outside but is free for any prisoner, and the public price supports the significant infrastructure (including "offical" publishing) needed to ensure that it actually gets past the rlly horrific regulations many prisons put on incoming printed materials. Its available in english, spanish, and italian; with french, arabic, german, and greek translations in progress. You can request free copies of this book for friends & loved ones on the inside anywhere in the world, OR for whole prisoner support mailing lists!
Also worth noting that, while there's a lot of anarchy-washed wellness influencer hucksters in the world that are worth being wary of & hating on, Nicole & her family live pretty cheap off money from her practice and the vast majority of money that gets to her goes back out to fund her clinical projects, the prisoners herbal distro, and (i can hard vouch) spread around to other ppl doing this kind of work who have less notoriety than she does. I still think the vast majority of ppl in my circles either aren't in a position to rlly give her money and/or should probably be giving money away to someone else but 🤷