So, I've been working on hatching a theoretical structure to address the quandary of MAGA for a long time. I think it is almost impossible to combat it unless one can identify grasp the causal factors of the eruption of a mass psychosis. This is going to be a really long thread and I'm developing it slowly. Please feel free to mute me if this irritates you - I'm thinking aloud here. And most of my ideas aren't original, I'm just sometimes gathering them together in novel ways. #musings
Gender Dysphoria: I deliberately stopped using this term or dysphoric (whenever possible) a while back. I have been incredibly uneasy as a trans woman how loaded the term still is with medical diagnosis and mental health connotations. It is imho:
a term of our oppression
a phrase of 'symbolic violence' (as Judith Butler might say)
a weak dilution of 'gender identity disorder'
I do not deny the experience, I deny the medicalisation, weaponisation and causes
IF in rejecting this term at every level I lose my ability to get a UK Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), then so be it.
No compromise
I keep my pride, my full trans agency and that - for me - is far more priceless :butterfly_trans:
Gender dysphoria isn't something I have
Gender, now this I do have in spades :Fire_Trans:
I miss when packages took like a week to arrive and there was no overnight postage nonsense (unless you paid a lot for it). Now it is industry standard and I need to be ready to get my package the next day, like...I need at least few buffer days to prepare emotionally.
Also the tracking system is not great and telling me it can come between 8-16 is NOT HELPFUL.
I an up at 8 only in case it arrives now.
Madness, I tell ya.
Holy shit, I just thought about AI, and I realized that a potential pitfall of AI art is massive degeneration.
Like, remember how you take a pic from the internet and it gets pixelated? And then the JPG artifacts get worse and worse?
If people start using AI art to generate their stuff, later that AI art will in turn get scanned by other AI, and it will be like Ouroboros: The snake that keeps eating itself.
Apart from creativity disappearing, the AI art will start converging into one single female face, one single futuristic background, the same type of buildings and cityscapes, because it will keep modeling the same things over and over and over...
1/x #zeroone is a fascinating platform and phenomenon. If you want to collect there, you have to create and upload.
I took this as an opportunity to turn some of my amateurish physical drawings and sketches into art—not simply by uploading them there, but by adding AI elements to make them pose a question:
Is this art already? Which impact has the use of AI on their perception as art?
Just thinking about how wrong the phrase is, "You have to earn respect".
No, you have to earn disrespect. As a human being, I'm naturally going to respect you if I don't know you. It's when you earn my disrespect, that I'll stop showing respect.
I give people respect freely, until they prove to me that they don't deserve it.
I have been wondering a lot about my career path, lately.
Started as a biologist, then a lab techie, then a biostatistician, and eventually an IT person. I recently left (was pressured out, essentially) a soul sucking job at a mediocre healthcare IT shop and I have zero desire to go back to that field.
We have a plethora of high quality data available to make important decisions... But as we've seen with at least COVID, the bottleneck seems to be more cultural than technical 😒
Learning that the voice in your head is a parrot of what you've been told & experienced in similar situations, rather than your actual brain is probably the wildest thing I've learned so far about mental health.
The #transition will start and #HRT will be allowed to do its magic. I am fully willing to keep a daily photo timeline of how my body will change. Hell, I'm also willing to photograph the pace of my breast development. Unsure if I'll post the NSFW stuff here, but I'll surely CW it if I do.
The pentecostals talked constantly about the afterlife. Heaven. In but not of the world. How did they get from that (which came with its own problems such as climate denial) to wanting to dominate and rule every aspect of society?
#Dominionism is the theological justification, but I think it's a subconscious realization that they wasted their time. They want their reward and power now.
I know I probably sound incredibly naive, but I have a core belief that the vast majority of people are trying to do good. My evidence is that as shitty as things are, society still runs. People care about friendships & families. Lots people want to get into fields of helping, nurturing, the arts, entertainment, gardening, animal care etc. You can have thousands of people on a highway all driving at incredible speeds with only a handful of accidents.
Ngl, as somebody who could disassociate at the drop of a hat - I seem to have lost that ability. I don't think I'm any less creative. But I used to watch whole movies in my head and now with proper therapy and meds, it's feels uninteresting? Boring? I don't really know how to describe it.
Has anyone else had this happen? Not sure if it's skill regression or just learning to be more present.
Transfemme Mastodon has been a giant love-fest of nothing but support from the moment I set foot here. Even the radical politics are borne of a sense of self-preservation and righteousness.
I love this place. And considering my egg cracked only two weeks ago in an explosive mess, I have never been more sure of who I am than in this moment. Transfemme Mastodon has only affirmed that.
I eagerly await to start #HRT in the next few weeks and have my body coccoon into a wonderful, feminine butterfly.
So I'm at the point where I'm pretty aggressively promoting the #Algorythms#podcast across various avenues of social media.
Even (reluctantly) used that bluebird hellsite. Probably the only reason I still occassionally bother with it.
Also, while one of my co-hosts is taking a trip to Japan, me and Duke (my other co-host) plan on doing a short episode. Either a punk act (The Clash; 6 albums) or a hip-hop act (Beastie Boys; 8 albums). Ideally, I would have Run-DMC or Public Enemy as a first hip-hop act, but as the co-host that is on the Japan trip is a fan of both of them, it'd be a dick move to do it while he's away.
Warning: POTENTIAL DYSPHORIA TRIGGER, CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
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I realized my sense of beauty, which was not too much influenced by our male dominated society’s view anyway, has changed slightly, and has become by now not influenced by the society at all anymore.
But the other thing is interesting: my sense of “pretty” and “cute” in people has changed completely - I mean, really completely.
I used to think Heidi Klum is pretty - or people like her; or a handful of men (I can’t really mention any).
But since a few months they feel just “meh” for me… Those people, for me, are not pretty but just “yeah, ok, fine”.
I know this is not HRT induced because I started that back in February 2022, and secretly even before that.
My sense of pretty has shifted completely in a way that I find pretty my siblings, whether they are trans or ND or both; I find trans our supporters pretty and cute; I find people who take a stand against fascism, racism, transphobia, … pretty and cute…
Whether they have just woken up with a huge hangover after a long party in the night or preparing to go to such party or preparing food, shopping, gardening or just going on their day while doing nothing or something … pretty and cute.
…. I could continue adding hundreds and hundreds and would still not be done for hours on end…
And when I say “pretty” I mean it - all of you are beautiful, each in their own way - but, for me, you are all so pretty, so cute (please don’t kill me, @Terra , please?)
Another shower, another #FragMyBrain. I am really trying to reduce showering in order to stop having these stupid thoughts. But, hey, I can't stop having showers, can I?
Whenever I post something, and especially if it is something sad, and people respond not only with "Favorite" but write something, my brain goes bananas.
I could just favorite their response, they probably don't even think I'd respond, but at the very least they don't really expect a response. But just favoriting a response where someone says "I feel you, take care" or sends a hug or something, feels like ... disrespectful. It feels like I am saying "yeah, ok, whatever" - at least for my brain. And no, I don't think this way the other way around. It is only when I do/don't do it.
The next thought is "but what if they think the same and if I respond to their response they feel the obligation to respond again and this becomes a catch-22? What if they just wanted to say 'I feel you' and hoped I would just favorite it and done with it. If I respond, do I put them in a weird situation, make them uncomfortable? Wouldn't it be better just to favorite? But then, won't they think 'eh, fine. They didn't see my response worth a response, so they don't value it...'?"
You see, this goes on and on.
And then there is this variation: I then start responding, but this creates other problems.
If there are a lot of responses to my original post, I don't want my responses to these responses look like copy/paste, because then, my fragging brain thinks, it could come over as lazy, then I should rather not respond at all. "It is disrespectful to just copy/paste or even give the impression it is copy/paste."
Ok, then let's start writing different responses, problem solved, right? Wrong!
There is the next problem: but what if the responses are different but some of them (very) short, others (very) long. Won't the ones I responded to with a short response think I value their responses less than the responses where I responded longer? And the emojis: which emojis to use where? Won't the ones getting a "cheaper emoji"* think that their response is valued less than the response of those getting "not so cheap emojis"*?
Yes, I still have to live with this fraggin' brain 😖
*: cheap: my brain thinks that those that just look like a face are cheap because they are at the beginning of my emoji-view. The further I have to travel, the less cheap they become... Did I say that I still have to live another 78 years with this collection of garbage I call a brain?
Finally got out of the flat to visit Japan Weekend Madrid. Saw one full fursuit so far, but I'm doing the cat thing and hiding.
Seeing lots of Naruto, one piece and bleach cosplayers. Lots of amazing art as well! These folks would do well at a furry con of they drew furry art XD
Also noticing the lack of super robot art. Too niche I guess XD
I'll have 2 dates I consider my "transiversary." The 1st is the sudden egg crack (7/11/2023) when I slipped on a dress for the first time. The 2nd is when I take my first #HRT pill. If all goes well with the shipment (ie, doesn't get stuck in customs), I will begin my #transition in 7 days.
This is the next step. I've socially transitioned, am out and loved by my family & friends, have felt the sheer #gendereuphoria of being able to freely love your friends platonically as a woman, untangled myself out of the web of both cisgenderism and attraction to men (which was weak even when I was "cis het"), started gently nudging my aging mother away from the #deadname she still sometimes uses out of a 28-year-habit, and see the beauty of transitioning more and more each day.
As of yesterday, I can say that being #trans is the best thing that has happened to me.
It's both a wonderful and an odd feeling :cat_mlem:
On one hand, that's a lot of people that found my thoughts worth their time and attention :cat_wow: :espeon_love:
On the other hand, my most faved post is words, not music (which runs counter to my usual sort-of-self-depricating motto of "I'm a musician, not a wordsmith" :blobfox_laugh_sweat: )
:blobhaj_think: Huh...does this mean I can finally give myself permission to call myself a bard without adding an asterisk? :zerotwo_flushed: :dracthyr_yay:
Anyone else's attempts at a 'girl' voice end up lapsing into a faux-British accent without even thinking? It wasn't exactly what I'm going for, but I kinda like it.
Recently did some work on this alternate altar that lives in our bedroom.
Some bones foraged from our land, some foraged back in Michigan by an old friend. The human teeth belong to the same friend (one of their baby teeth & wisdom teeth, given as a gift).
The altar in our public space is a really wonderful artistic display, a story of us, blending a lot of cultural elements that we share and some that we only share because we're sharing a life together. It's full of offerings to this land, but also pulled tarot cards, sculptures, gifts from friends, palo santo & copal incense, stones and offering plates from my side of the family. Bundled pine, bundled sage, and blessed rosemary. It's public, interactive, and beautiful.
This altar, though, is very personal. Some elements have been in my possession for years, before I began this journey into spiritual practice, before I knew what their purpose was (or my own). Some elements have been added over time: the fossilized lizard tail and heart, for example, I found after opening the first studio I had on this land. The rat femurs I also found on the land, while cleaning trash when we first moved in, and all of these little things that have found me I've felt compelled to venerate and offer back to the space. The display in our living space is public: it invites guests to add to it, and sometimes they leave offerings for us there, too. But this space is in our private area, and it feels like it contains little secret pieces of us and the land. Things that people only really see if they spend enough time here to become privy to them.
To me this parallels the reality of working with such a space: many people come and enjoy the superficial aesthetic beauty of the land and the home, for a time. But they don't truly understand what it is we're doing here, or what it really means to be here. They have respect, but lack full awareness and veneration. But there are some who know what this land means just by virtue of having been here -- some needed to come often to feel it, some stepped foot on it and knew instantly that it was special. But that kind of awareness isn't common, and it's something that we hold very dear. We keep very close to us those who share our recognition of this space as liminal, as straddling time and place, of its constantly repeated history, playing out over and over each moment, and the responsibility we have to honor the spirits that exist here.