@oldladyplays@wargamers.social
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

oldladyplays

@oldladyplays@wargamers.social

Cait is a grandmother, activist, translator (🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇷🇺 > 🇬🇧), writer, artist, musician, gamer, footy fan, and a bit of a flirt (show me yer shoulders, sweetie!). Transition 11/92, HRT 11/94.

Hugs and flirting welcome. I will never lie about your appearance. #ProudToBeTrans

Striving every day to be anti-racist & equity-based. I have a #PrivilegeJar.

PFP by https://mastodon.art/@SummerKnight

🏳️‍⚧️: trans rights are human rights

YouTube: Historical gaming, war gaming, and FM24

#nobridge

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Impossible_PhD, to random
@Impossible_PhD@hachyderm.io avatar

Struggle post. Fair warning.

So yesterday I had to cut off not one, but two people I'd been helping as they questioned/navigated early coming out to themselves because, in both cases, the person would not respect crucial boundaries I repeatedly articulated for their protection and mine. And like... I don't blame them for needing what I couldn't give. I'm not angry at them. They're new to all this, and figuring shit out is an incredibly emotionally-fraught time. Shit happens.

🧵(1/?)

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@kelidanovus @Impossible_PhD

What @kelidanovus said. You don't need to justify your boundaries. You do more than plenty; your ledger is already way out of balance with what you do compared to what you receive.

You said something similar to me the other day, so I return it at need. Be easy on yourself.

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

Boohoo! Here it is and no one is posting any selfies...woe is me.

The sf story i was referencing the on Friday, by the way, was A !Tangled Web by Joe Haldeman.

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

This coming Friday (15 March) there will be a panel at 25 Water St N in Kitchener. This panel will be called Law vs. Justice: State-Sanctioned Violence In Our Communities.

I have the honour of having been asked to take part in this fundraiser. We're raising money for Operation Sandbag House, whose goal is to build tiny houses out of sandbags, a cheap and effective method of doing so, and then giving them to unhoused people.

We have some really excellent speakers on this panel: Amy Smoke of and the Willow River Centre will be there, and Kamil Ahmed from Community Fridge KW and Tri-Pride too.

If you could pass the information on to your local leftist circles, I think a lot of them will be very interested in making it.

Boosts very welcome and encouraged.

image/png

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

This is a subtoot.

There is no value in "ranking" the various forms of bigotry experienced on the Fediverse. There is no Oppression Olympics. It is all one bloody fight, you fools. It's the same bloody fight. Misogyny, transphobia, anti-Blackness, antisemitism*...they're all the same damn fight.

  • changed spelling per suggestion in replies

The only thing served by trying to compete for who's most oppressed is that the ruling class get to enjoy our squabbles, while they continue distracting us from the way they're destroying our civilization around our ears.

🙄

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

Dum, dum, dum, dum-di-dum

is an obscure oldie (I know, that's new for me) from the band the Specials became: Funboy Three with "It Ain't What You Do", based off an old swing tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_kjctTbMHA

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Hard to overstate how enshittified and botshitted Google Maps has become. Went looking for my local locksmith on Gmaps. Maps shows 20+ fake locksmith referral scam outlets and doesn't even register the real locksmith, despite it being fully visible in Street View.

Instead, a red pin on the shop identifies it as a fake locksmith scammer. The real locksmith - which has been there SINCE 1942 (!!) and is a verified merchant - doesn't even show up.

Google Maps, showing the storefront for Golden State Lock as an empty building.

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@tomjennings

I have seen this with taxis (which never see the number on my huge apartment building, drive right past and up the street where their GPS tells them to, wrongly), and with delivery drivers (who often are directed to the back door, which I cannot open remotely for them, by their GPS).

@bougiewonderland @pluralistic @AnnaAnthro

autism101, to actuallyautistic
@autism101@mstdn.social avatar

Let’s talk tags on clothing. I hate them and they annoy me to no end. And even if I cut them off, the tiny bit remaining always manages to touch me and I hate it. 😩

Do tags bother you?

@actuallyautistic

image: unknown

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@autism101 @actuallyautistic

Every single time, she said, learning newly that this is an autistic thing (thanks for that, I'm still learning about myself).

I favour companies who print the information on the inside of the collar or below it. No tag, no stump of a tag, nothing to annoy.

Impossible_PhD, to trans
@Impossible_PhD@hachyderm.io avatar

When a trans person comes out, one of the most common, and challenging, parts of doing so is responding to family members who say they need to grieve us. A lot of pain, on every side, tends to swirl around the members of a relationship when that happens.

But it's not necessarily--even commonly--a bad thing.

This week on , we're talking about Letting Them Let Go--when family members grieve us in transition.

https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/letting-them-let-go

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@Impossible_PhD

Gonna send this to my friend who's a researcher in grief issues at a local uni. She's got a trans brother and a nonbinary kid. I think she'll really appreciate this trans-flavoured take on her subject of interest.

Her specific area is grief tattoos, btw. Really fascinating work.

transactualuk, (edited ) to trans
@transactualuk@mastodon.social avatar

Trans children and young people deserve to be supported and safe at school.

Please respond if:

  • You're trans
  • You're the parent/carer of a trans person
  • You're LGBQIA+
  • You work with children and/or young people

Click here: https://www.consortium.lgbt/supportiveschoolscampaign

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@transactualuk

Forgive me saying so, but that's a rather sad attempt at accessibility. Alt-text is the gold standard. But simply saying what colours the information is backgrounded with is not useful for viewers with low vision resources.

Please consider using the alt-text feature to describe your images properly, or use the hashtag to ask someone else if they can pick up the slack. To properly describe, enter the text on the image, and describe it visually only as much as needed to convey the useful information.

Thanks for your attention to this.

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

I cried hard tonight. Like, really really hard. When it gets deep for me, deeply emotional, my feet hurt, the soles of my feet. I don't know why, just always been that way. My feet hurt tonight.

It's better now, for sure. I'm not crying anymore, just sitting here getting quietly high before going back to bed.

But wow...really cleared the leaves out of the downspouts on that one.

Don't wanna talk yet about what made me cry so hard. Good friends are helping me deal with it, as best they can. And maybe I'll be able to talk about it in the morning.

For now, I'm just gonna groove to this tune, and then eventually drift off to bed on waves of cannabis smoke. G'night, Fedi. Or g'mornin, if that's where you're at.

EDIT: Sorry, this tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGK6vjvmw4I

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

An interesting thing just passed by my timeline, and I thought "hey, that's an interesting thing."

I see people frequently saying "Why doesn't the left do more to just win?"

And I have an actual answer for that. Because much of what politics does doesn't fit our principles. And if we don't have our principles, we have nothing.

If by fighting harder you mean demonizing opponents beyond their actual threat level, or demagoging on fear of something, or those kinds of tactics that the right finds perfectly acceptable, then in what way are we materially better? In what way do we deserve to be ahead of them in people's choices?

We believe what we do because of our principles. We don't believe in being hypocrites. We don't believe in being shameless if we screw up.

Yes, in one way, this ties one hand behind our back.

But in another way, it wins in the long term. Because as the right descends into a deeper and deeper grifting hell, more and more people in the middle are going to look at them, look at us, and decide we're the better choice.

We live in eternal tension between our principles and our desire to make society a kinder, more equitable place than it is.

Like, practical things: the right want to do a "Muslim ban". Does that mean we're justified in demanding a "Christian ban"? That would be fighting back, wouldn't it?

No. Because it violates our principles, and means we're no longer acting from our core, but maladapting bad habits from our opponents.

We stick to the principles, because without them are we really anything at all? Or are we just another set of grifters looking to rule?

Proudly left. And will go down fighting the extreme right all the way.

With my principles intact.

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

Well, RIP my mentions. Two posts doing the rounds this morning, and my notifications would be making me dangerously annoyed if I had the sound on. I might have to mute favourites for a bit today.

Anyway, it's a good day. Stormy and rainy here, as it seems to be all over the eastern half of North America.

I'm sore, and I'm missing my Cokes (ran out yesterday, no more until monthly cheques come tomorrow and I can order some for Friday).

But it's a pretty small set of problems in the scheme of things.

I hope your day {APPROPRIATELY_TENSED_VERB) really great.

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

Using the women's bathroom: a primer for trans femme people.

I know this is a really stressful topic for some folk, so I'll try to be gentle here.

First things first. Should you be using the women's? Basically, here's my guide: if you like your presentation enough that you're going out in public, you're probably too femme for the men's.

So. You decide to use the women's. What next? Confidence. Confidence is crucial, and here's the good part: can be faked. This is a true "fake it til you make it" situation. Stroll in like you own the place, select your stall, do your business.

DO NOT WORRY ABOUT: the size of your shoes, the sound of your urination, the chance someone will look into those stupid gaps in North American stall doors, or anything else. No one cares but you.

When you're done in the stall, rearrange yourself clothing wise and get back out there. Stride again, stride confidently to the washbasins and do your work. Fix your makeup if you want, check your hair. If anyone else looks at you, smile and use the mirror to make eye contact.

Trust me on this one. I know it feels like a creeper thing to do, and if you were masc-presenting, it would be. But a smile and eye contact says "I belong here, how ya doing?" like nothing else.

WOMEN DO THIS. They make eye contact with one another, small talk, compliment one another, and so on. Don't choke up when it happens. Your voice is fine. Say thanks, and compliment something of hers.

If she makes you as trans, she may ask you something about it. Don't be alarmed. It's a normal thing to talk to other women in the bathroom, and if she were going to be upset, she'd be there already. Just answer as best you can, maybe with a bit of self-deprecating humour.

Then finish up your business before the sinks, smile again and say "have a good day" or something like it, and walk confidently out of there because you just rocked it.

That's how you do it. It gets easier each time.

Good luck.

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@maggiejk @lisamelton
No that's very much my experience. I've never once felt physically threatened in the women's, even when things went badly (security got called, or the cops). If it had happened in the men's, I'd expect to leave in an ambulance. There's no comparison.

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

"BE LIKE JESUS!" they said.

"Okay," says I, "I will."

So I started growing my hair out, wearing floor-length robes with kicky sandals, and taking three days off every Easter.

"Not like that!" they said.

"Okay," says I. "I get you."

So I went to the local temple and threw their ATM out into the parking lot. I spun up some bread and went to the homeless encampment to wash some feet and distribute manna.

"Not like that!" they said.

"So...don't be like Jesus?"

"That's right!" they said.

So now I spend my time drinking wine with crackers, which is apparently okay.

Jaden3, to random
@Jaden3@mastodon.social avatar

Just wan say I joined mastodon by accident. Just saw this ho trending 1 day an I thought yeah what tf.
It is so fking good tho. So many different posts yall don get on other socials.
I no I'm younger than most folks on here but this shit good.
Looking fo mo people to fw. Hit me up if yall interested.
Love Jaden ❤️

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@Jaden3 @AppleJuiceNerd

Agreed! More young people would be great for this platform. Y'all bring an energy that us old farts can't match, and it's something the community needs. I love reading Jaden's posts, it's a window into a world I've never been a part of, and it's so valuable to me. I learn so much from this young man. :)

oldladyplays, to random
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

Part 1:

Finally posted an Introduction Video for my Fullmetal Feminist channel (the one where I'll be answering questions from and for parents of trans and nonbinary kids).

https://youtu.be/Y4ZclWJIT0w

Feel free to spread news of the channel's existence, boosts are welcome. If you know the parents of any trans or nonbinary kids, please let them know this is coming soon.

Part 2:

I will be looking for collaborators who have a basic video/audio setup they can use. Background is up to you, and we can make you as anonymous as you want (pixelation, altered voice, whatever). The ask would be for two to three minutes about your experience of the question being answered.

For instance, my first video will start to answer "My kid just came out! What do I do?"

If you have a story about coming out to your parents as a young trans or nonbinary person, I'd be interested to have you tell it on video, 2 to 3 minutes max.

Initially, it will be unpaid work, but my hope is that as the channel gains steam, I'll be able to compensate people who contribute to the project, including the early contributors.

That is all. For now.

oldladyplays,
@oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

@lisamelton

Thanks, Lisa! I hope it's going to turn out as well as I want. :)

JoscelynTransient, to random
@JoscelynTransient@chaosfem.tw avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    oldladyplays,
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    @JoscelynTransient

    I'm glad your experiences with drag have been so positive. Genuinely.

    But I think the low blow here, and the part I resent, is when you suggest that the feelings I have about drag are because I'm not involved in the community or activism for queers.

    Like, genuinely, my dear friend, that one was worth a go fuck yourself. I'm not going to say that, because I do like you a bunch, but that was a cheap shot and unworthy of you.

    After 30 years of activism for this community, I think I've earned the right to not want to go see drag performances, and to have some issues as a feminist with drag as an art form. I am not unfamiliar with the demographics of drag in the US; here it is almost exclusively a playground for the white and cis. There's only one actually trans drag queen in this area - the rest are determinedly cis gay men.

    So please don't universalize your experience to say that what you see is what we all see.

    Still love you. All the hugs. Hate differing with you.

    oldladyplays, to random
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    I am fully infertile.

    I want to get that out of the way up front, because it's true. I have no dog in the fight.

    But I want to state, unequivocally and clearly, that I stand with those who have the equipment for giving birth on the topic of abortion, and IVF, and any other power grabs the right comes up with to control the bodies of birthing people.

    For me, it's an issue we as trans people should be fighting as hard for as we fight for our own direct issues. Bodily autonomy applies. It's the same basic issue motivating both anti-trans and anti-abortion campaigners: control of others' bodies.

    When we fight for abortion access, we are indirectly and directly still fighting for trans people. We're fighting for trans masc and AFAB enby people to be given full rights over their own bodies. That's the direct path. We're also fighting for the right for all trans people to control our bodies.

    So let's stand beside our uterine neighbours, trans women. We are all in the same fight.

    oldladyplays,
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    Now, the flip side.

    Cis women! It's time you stood up with us to fight for trans rights. It's your fight too.

    Why? Because it's all about bodily autonomy. Trans people are fighting for the right to control our own bodies. Sound familiar?

    It's the same fight, women. We need your help, just as we give ours. We are in the same fight, and should be shoulder to shoulder about both our sets of issues.

    The best way to fight fascism is together. The more of us fighting, the better our chances of winning.

    Impossible_PhD, to random
    @Impossible_PhD@hachyderm.io avatar

    So I'm just gonna stare at these boudior photos until I die of extreme old age.

    And yes, I am gonna slow roll sharing the ones I can share. 💅

    oldladyplays,
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    @Impossible_PhD

    Ooh, is it and no one told me? What a heavenly gift of a picture, thank you.

    oldladyplays,
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    @ellie @shaggyzed @Impossible_PhD

    IKR? There's just so much to admire. Just a gorgeous picture of a beautiful woman. The joy flows off it in waves.

    oldladyplays,
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    @Impossible_PhD @ellie @shaggyzed

    I know! If they're better than this, they'd be lethal-grade weapons of mass distraction. Cars would crash. Lampposts would be too dented to stand.

    It's better for the world, probably. I think even a self-driving Tesla would drive off the road if these pictures came over the net... :D

    DrALJONES, to Palestine
    @DrALJONES@mastodon.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    oldladyplays,
    @oldladyplays@wargamers.social avatar

    @DrALJONES It's true. I only contend that if the right court had been chosen, one with a bit of teeth, they'd have had a harder time ignoring it, because it would be targeting Bibi and his cronies, not the country of Israel.

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