You Know How I Know You’re Gay?

See also: "My pronouns are she, but not her…. I’ll never be her…"

It is WILD to me how different people my age and older who didn't grow up with paranoid parents feel about cell phones.

They think of them as symbolizing a lack of freedom, where kids have to check in with and are instantly reachable by their parents, if not outright GPS tracked.

I think of my first phone fondly. It was the only reason I was allowed to go anywhere or do anything at all. Sure, I was expected to answer my parents' calls immediately and call them the minute I knew it if I was going to be even a millisecond late, but I was ALLOWED to do at least a few things thanks to them knowing that I always kept my phone charged with the ringer on.

I guess when you're not caged, a leash looks like restriction, but if you are kept under lock and key, a leash means a little taste of freedom.

Trans Life Hack

Take the average age that a cis child would start the puberty you are now undergoing. If you'd like, you can use a sibling or other relative's starting age to guess at what yours would've been. Keep in mind that hormonal shifts start a while before any changes are readily apparent, so the actual starting age is younger than you might guess.

Determine the amount of years you've been on hormones. Subtract any amount of time you weren't able to consistently keep up with it. If you went through a period of significant dose adjustment, you may want to set your starting clock at when you got on the right dose for you, not when you started trying it out.

Add Steps 1 and 2 together to get your True Gender Age.

Compare your changes to cis people of that age, not people your own age.

Even though religious women who cover up will claim that they believe in feminism and free choice, they sure do love to call their own particular style of clothing "modest".

Think about that for two (2) seconds.

I don't think it's random, accidental, or coincidental. Words mean things. If you want to reclaim that style of dress as by and for women, rather than dictated by men and imposed on women, then you really do have to step away from the inherently patriarchal branding embedded in words like "modest".

And I'm speaking as a former devoted hijab-wearer. "High-coverage" is right there for the taking. You could also specify what you mean by "modest": high-necked, long-sleeved, loose-fitting, ankle-length, dark-colored, whatever. It's not like women even within the same religion agree on what's suitably "modest". Saying what you mean is a good thing.

Inside of my house (and heart) are two cats.

One of them prefers for you to pet him without paying too much attention to him. He will run away if you focus on him with anything resembling intent.

The other will give you a firm skippity-bap with her giant paws if you don't pay attention to her as you pet her.

It's OK to confuse the first for the second. Woe betide anyone who dares to absentmindedly treat her as though she were him.

I was today years old when I learned that not only do African Queen and European Queen exist, not only are they not joke edits, but also the original was European Queen.

I'm trying to be charitable, but it's hard for me to not see strong beliefs in manifestation/The Secret/etc. as ultimately victim blaming but with extra steps.

I don't disagree with the idea of setting goals/intentions, focusing on a better future for yourself, speaking desires out loud, etc. Those things are how we as humans help ourselves and ask for help from each other. I do these things, but I don't think it's asking anyone but myself and other human beings for anything. I don't think I'm calling anything forth from the ether.

I also don't disagree with accepting things that we can't change, but I don't believe you have to tack on judgement to do that. This is the world we have, and there's no point in being constantly upset about that, but calling this the best of all possible worlds is dicey.

Like astrology, it seems to be an assumed belief on queer communities especially. It's weird that cis-hets don't generally assume my beliefs in casual conversation, but I'm supposed to go along with it when someone tells me I'm "manifesting" and I'm a big old meanie killjoy at best if I say that those aren't my beliefs.

Knowledge is knowing that it's Frankenstein's monster; wisdom is not looking for a lab coat when you Find Frankie.

A Cellular Longing

Unfocus to see: it is only the inconsistency saying all isn't pulsing in unity

Then, blink into clarity

Solidity is made into illusion Most of what's between, most of what's everything, isn't anything at all What's fundamental is emptiness.

Do you hear the mostly-gaps crying out to be crossed?

Or maybe it's us yearning to traverse

To leave halos in our wake To carve the trails that we take To dust up the little clouds we make

To shed bits of ourselves studded into the vast nothing that they might serve as markers: that there is matter that we are matter that we think we matter that we matter here

tfw when I see a post in a group on Zuck's Overgrown Hot-or-Not™ that's comment-locked, and it takes me exactly one (1) second of glancing at the headline to understand wtf happened