June 2013
14 posts
Yesterday I got my letter to go ahead with a trans-related medical procedure.
To get my letter I had to sit down with a certified psychologist over multiple sessions & convince that cis professional that
a) I am sane enough to understand what I want & what the pros and cons of doing such a dramatic medical procedure are, AND
b) I really am suffering from DSM reference #302.85 and meet the WPATH Standards of Care criteria for the mental disorder that I am trying to obtain treatment for.
So that’s a hilarious little catch-22 that I’ve now successfully danced through.
While, it may be seen as frustrating to you, which i can completely comprehend how it would be, i think it’s not all a bad thing.
With the increasing spotlight on the trans community it’s not a terrible thing that there are various steps to take in getting such a procedure.
I think it’s the weed out the people who think that the new “trans-fad” is a new thing to pick up much like those very same people were “scene kids” a few years ago.
I understand it’s not a perfect analogy, and you personally are frustrated with your experience, but it’s a good process to make sure people fully understand and know what they are committing to before such a major surgery.
No, sweetie. You’re wrong.
Your basic justification of the barriers trans people face for getting treatment- namely, to keep impressionable people from hopping on the “trans trend”- is historically false. The barriers keeping trans people from treatment are there to keep trans people from being treated.
Additionally, I would like to note that you are prioritizing the potential regret of a hypothetical cis group over the very real needs of actual trans people. Some people might find this upsetting. Can you imagine why?
Also, perhaps taking off on a slight tangent here, I find it interesting that cis people tend to have this idea that there is a clear delineation between someone who is cis and someone who is trans. The idea seems to be that if you are trans, you know it as a rock-hard certainty, and you’ve always known it, and you’ve always acted like the “opposite gender” or whatever nonsense phrase cis people like to use. And for some trans people, hell yes, that’s totally the case. But it certainly isn’t an experience shared by every trans person. Some people think they’re cis for years, whether through denial or just honest ignorance, and only come to the realization that they’re trans later in life. A lot of trans people struggle with their gender, their identity, their presentation, even whether or not they actually are trans or not. There can be a huge amount of self-doubt. And why not? Many cis people struggle with their gender, too, wonder if they’re female enough or male enough, worry about their presentation, stand in front of a mirror and feel discontent about their bodies. It’s a pretty common thing to worry about gender.
I think it’s important for cis people to believe that trans people don’t, though. Trans people have it all figured out. We know what we are and we always have. Or, at least, that’s what we need to tell the doctor if we want that referral letter to get treatment.
And- this is just speculation, mind- I think it’s important for cis people to have this narrative of trans people because if cis people believed that trans people maybe struggle with their identities and maybe didn’t know all their lives and maybe the realization just kind of hit us without warning one day and after that there was no denying it and our whole lives were changed, then- fuck. That means this whole thing might happen to you.
tu l'as vue, la bande Annonce ? Tu as vu Smaug ?
yesyes yesyes!!!!!
at least 5 times already :D
“While cis girls, throughout their socialization and lives in our culture, internalize cultural messages about ideal womanhood as a demand of what they need to be in order to be considered valuable, desirable, good women, they have the comparable ‘advantage’ of at least already being girls / women (or at least already having that assignment). Trans girls, though, are subjected to those same messages but internalize them as what is required to manifest womanhood at all. We’re swimming upstream against our gender assignment, and if THAT is what ‘being a woman is all about’, THAT gets internalized as the standard we need to live up not simply to be loved and valued, but in order to simply be read and perceived as ourselves. In other words, while cis girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be good girls, trans girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be.
This ends up creating a whole lot more existential urgency in a trans woman to live up to the cultural standards of womanhood. For us, the question driving our self-hatred and self-consciousness over stupid things like our body not meeting arbitrary-cultural-standard-of-beauty #2677 isn’t as relatively easily conquered as the desire to ‘fit in’ or be ‘good’. It’s instead driven by the pressing need to exist, to be embodied, to be seen by others and understood as who we are rather than who we aren’t.” —
This ends up creating a whole lot more existential urgency in a trans woman to live up to the cultural standards of womanhood. For us, the question driving our self-hatred and self-consciousness over stupid things like our body not meeting arbitrary-cultural-standard-of-beauty #2677 isn’t as relatively easily conquered as the desire to ‘fit in’ or be ‘good’. It’s instead driven by the pressing need to exist, to be embodied, to be seen by others and understood as who we are rather than who we aren’t.” —
Natalie Reed, Is He Checking Me Out, Or Just Staring At The Freak?
Read the whole thing.
(via kiriamaya)
so much feelings. so much of this i relate to on. a. daily. basis.
(via itisrighttorebel)
Yes.
ETA: God bless the wayback machine. Read the full post here.
(via sexartandpolitics)
“Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver.”
—Countess Markievicz, 19th century Irish revolutionary, dispensing eternally relevant fashion advice (via woolfisms)
I want to make a list of all female characters in Tolkien's works
with the criteria to get in the list being as follow:
- Have a name
- Have at least one line of dialogue
The draft version of this list is as follow:
- The hobbit: no one. I don’t think there’s even a single woman mentioned in the book? yay. (if I’m wrong, please do tell me. I want to be wrong)
- LotR: Lobelia, Rosie, Goldberry, Arwen, Eowyn, Galadriel, that one old woman fangirling over Aragorn in Gondor (she had a name, just can’t remember it) and maybe a few others?
- the Silmarilion: Yavanna (not sure which of the other Valars actually get dialogue, but she had this whole conversation about dwarves so I remember her), Luthien (well I HOPE she gets dialogue?) and probably a bunch of others, I’m still at the beginning of my re-reading
The idea here is, you don’t like Jackon’s OFC? okay. Let’s see what canon has to offer then.
And my insistence on dialogue is because it’s way to easy to just mention someone. My reasoning is if they get to talk, they are important.
I’ll make a prettier list later, I just wanted to, you know, share the idea~
I think Belladonna Took, Bilbo’s mother was mentioned in The Hobbit, I kept a memory of her long after reading the book, (And it’s the reason why I’m so happy she will be in the extended edition of An unexpected journey) but maybe she wasn’t mentioned by name, I have to reread the book (At least I’m sure it was mentioned that Bilbo is Took by his mother)
But this of course doesn’t make her count as a named talking character.
In the Silmarillion, Melian has dialogue with whatshisname, her husband (if i remember correctly). And Turin’s sister maybe possibly with Turin? Or perhaps in the Narn I Chin Hurin? But that’s just a guess, Turin’s sister.
2879) God I just want to be able to hook up with people without this bullshit about disclosure. It just kills it. I want a girl to be able to take me home and just fuck me without some epic conversation about my life and what's in between my legs. I want to be able to hook up with guys without the constant worry of weather or not this is a fetish. I want to experience life without all of this headspace devoted to passing and stealthing and whatever the fuck. Fuck you trans-ness. Fuck. You.
And even now, post-op, passing well, this still takes so much space in my head.
vegan pizza is a lot like lesbian sex in the respect that a lot of people are like BUT HOW IS IT GOOD IT’S MISSING THE MOST IMPORTANT THING
but vegans and lesbians
will know that isn’t true at all
this is still my favourite post
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.”
—
Cicero, circa 43 BC (via amandaonwriting)
“The recency illusion is the belief or impression that something is of recent origin when it is in fact long-established.”
(via cimness)
Probably not Cicero though… *sigh* always good to check your sources, in particular for me before making it my sig in a forum which includes a classicist or two ^^
May 2013
18 posts
“[TW: suicide]
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill them self doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill them self the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.
Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flame yet nobody down on the side walk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” —
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill them self doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill them self the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.
Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flame yet nobody down on the side walk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” —
- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (via orderincha0s)
Whenever DFW comes up on my dash in a post that I have not posted it freaks me the fuck out
This passage is also the truest depiction of suicidality I’ve ever read and deeply necessary
(via therapsida)
Here's to you for making it through another day in a brutal world that makes survival mentally and physically and spiritually difficult. You are awesome.
I think I’ll reblog this before I go to bed when I can. This is especially a shout out to the Black women and queer and trans* people, those dealing with mental health stuff and poverty and assholes and abusers and all that