no boys allowed in the room!!!!

xp I don’t remember writing this post

(This is also not a dig at poster cat)

I just don't have the patience to sift through inane one-liners about serious topics or to read some thought dump that isn't actually engaging with anyone else. It's super aggravating.

preach

But that's all that I post.

I'm here but also only a lurker on a handful of threads

I took a brief look at the Roe thread, did not see any people-who-can-become-pregnant posting on it, and was like uh nevermind i am tired of bloviating dudes

woke feminist dudes of ilx posting everything EXCEPT any interest in where the sixish women of ilx are in all of this

so fucking otm

still lurking here but mostly for updates on things I’m interested in, rather than the conversations

cis men are authorities on everything, they can speak on everything, speak for everyone. it's their _responsibility_, their _burden_ if you will.

i wanted to write something about it my perspective when one of my friends got beat down by terfs on twitter for talking about how the ruling is also being weaponized against trans people, to talk about understanding how medical gatekeeping works, that abortion was already de facto illegal a lot of places. i don't think that talking about these aspects of it erases or invalidates the ways people who can become pregnant are hurt by it. kind of ties in with an essay i'm sort of maybe writing involving the question of whether anne frank was a lesbian.

but really i just need to run these reports and find a new place to live. this... i'm tired of performative outrage by, you know, particularly by cis men that isn't backed up by anything. they draw a line in the sand it gets erased and they draw a new one a little farther back and they can do that, they have _plenty of room_. we're the ones drowning 50 feet behind them. if i don't want to drown, _they're_ the ones i have to fight, not the people they say they're _protecting_ me from.

when i was at pride i got a pin from the satanist booth that said "bodily autonomy is the right of every human". it was printed over the trans flag but trans people aren't the only people whose bodily autonomy is under attack.

whoooo yes to that last point -- the idea that some people believed that i had no worth apart from my reproductive system has haunted me since i was 15 or so.

AFAICT there is a lot of latent just-below-surface hostility on top of the aggravating posting styles mentioned by quincie and yerac so far. i am fully aware that these are challenging times to be alive; i don't think it's ok to externalize despair and anger on a message board. that is my personal belief and i understand not everyone agrees.

wait a second where is VG?!!

woke feminist dudes of ilx posting everything EXCEPT any interest in where the sixish women of ilx are in all of this

And I probably shouldn’t talk about this, but I won’t forget how I had people queuing up to call me a liar at the behest of someone making a claim about something I never fucking said. I am interested in how acceptable it was to call me a liar and how automatically people believed me.

oh yeah i do remember your post because i was looking for discussion about it too and the derail into an abstract discussion turned me right around.

it was really frustrating and even worse to see looking back. your initial post was really thoughtful gyac <3

AFAICT there is a lot of latent just-below-surface hostility on top of the aggravating posting styles mentioned by quincie and yerac so far. i am fully aware that these are challenging times to be alive; i don't think it's ok to externalize despair and anger on a message board. that is my personal belief and i understand not everyone agrees.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera)

honestly it's something i struggle with a lot, coming from a place where i was a heavily discourse/irony poisoned troll and shitposter. i also think it's... embedded in a lot of the history in this board. people here used to be pretty overtly cruel and nasty to each other, in the same way that i used to be overtly cruel and nasty to other people, the same way that i acted to perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

at the same time this is a fucking loss, a serious fucking loss. people in the community i admin are perpetually on the edge of despair. i set up a channel for discussion current events and i don't look at it myself, i have the other mods do it because doing that leads me to spiral. (same reason i haven't looked at the roe thread, at any of the direct politics threads).

i don't engage with politics as _discourse_, i engage with politics as _trauma_. this is a serious fucking traumatic event to, first and foremost, anybody at risk of pregnancy, but beyond that to _anybody not normatively gendered_, which is to say, anybody who is not a cisgender male. on some level i feel... i feel very not alone, _very_ not alone, that this is an attack on every woman and every trans person. they believe they own us. they believe we are chattel. they believe they have the _right_ to _control our bodies_.

so, yeah, grief, despair, and not anger but... well, for me it's what susan stryker described as "transgender rage". it is scary but it is... i mean it's not an act of fragility and resentment, it's something _else_.

i had a really good friend and he was really into radical politics, collected old weather underground pamphlets and ranted like, i don't know, all those comedians in the '90s used to, like bill hicks or somebody used to, and i transitioned and he didn't _get_ it, it was very important that he _get_ it, and he needed me to _explain_ it to him, and this was early enough on that i did, and he still didn't _get_ it but he provisionally accepted my explanation.

but then later, there was me and there was another queer woman in the channel, in 2020, and he got really _upset_ at _us_ because he didn't like the way we were talking. and he demanded that we stop doing that. it was, like, our fault. our fault that we were _angry_. before transition, anger was the only emotion i was allowed, and now, since transition, it's really clear to me that anger is an emotion that i am _now_ allowed.

and honestly, you know, i wouldn't do it this way these days, but i made a real effort to accommodate him. and he left anyway, and i'm so fucking grateful. i'm so fucking grateful that i don't have to talk to that miserable fucking piece of shit anymore. i'm really sorry for his daughter and his wife, but i'm glad that none of us at least have to deal with his shit anymore.

anyway. i think there... historically have been some people in ilx that reminded me a lot of this old friend of mine.

i apologize if i'm bringing too much of my own shit in here.

sorry i wasn't clear, grief _not_ despair, grief as an alternative to despair.

"but then later, there was me and there was another queer woman in the channel, in 2020, and he got really _upset_ at _us_ because he didn't like the way we were talking. and he demanded that we stop doing that. it was, like, our fault. our fault that we were _angry_. before transition, anger was the only emotion i was allowed, and now, since transition, it's really clear to me that anger is an emotion that i am _now_ allowed."

fuck. sorry, i make these typos and it makes the meaning the opposite of what i meant, _not_ allowed

I look at this board maybe once a week as habit. There are what, 20-40 active users at a time it seems and I no longer actively participate so I have no reason to say how people should try to behave or make it a better place since I tuned out. If I want to talk in-depth about a topic I go to a subreddit or discord or slack. I don't think ilx is set up for that but people obviously still prefer it here to other places. Probably due to no reactions to your posts and not needing to see notifications of your name. It's like a passive aggressive place to be.

many xposts LL i am still here, alive & well

i engage in the threads i like to engage in, talk to the ppl i like to talk to, and try not to take too much of anything else itt on board. (i have to do this for my own health)

if ppl respond or don’t respond to me i dont take it personally. there’s plenty of times that i read a post & have nothing to add, doesnt mean ppl dont engage w it in their own way.

sorry if that’s too charitable pvmic i guess idk

oh there are definitely still people i like here, but I also see them other places. Part of this I think is just the culmination of a lot of stuff eroding and final frustrations after so many years. Since it's the same people posting here you already know their schtick and their repetitions and maybe politics just finally broke ilx. Like, I really don't need to know what the dude that plays with his genitals at work thinks about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in context of abortion bans.

Truth

Yay VG
Your presence makes me happy 😃

Yay VG
Your presence makes me happy 😃

+1 to the girl count, and +1 to the yay VG! count. Reading here pretty much daily but only a handful of threads. I've also avoided the SCOTUS and politics threads for years.

can't think of a greasier slide straight down to the pits of despair than talking politics w/ cishetdudes, if others wanna take up that burden i wish them strength but i ain't throwing myself on that trashfire

no offense to the allies, i just feel my oxygen mask slipping off any time conversation turns that way

you know what i think? you know what i really think?

_there is something wrong with cis men_

i don't think it's just that manhood wasn't right for _me_. i look at cisnormative masculinity and i think this is something that doesn't work for _anybody_. us most of all. their patriarchy hurts us most of all and that's what's most important, but it doesn't work for _them_ either. so many of them are even worse at being men than _i_ was. they are so broken, so fragile, so _hurt_, but you can't tell them that. you can't tell them that because if you tell them that they will get _angry_ and they will _hurt us_.

i love men so much, but it's not _safe_ for me to be around cis men. i can't help them. i have to walk away.

really happy for nd stevenson though. i'm so happy for nate, it's so so awesome.

seems 2 me like all the gender straitjackets are designed to drive their inhabitants bonkers, ideally in ways which reinforce the patriarchal paradigm

I really don't need to know what the dude that plays with his genitals at work thinks about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in context of abortion bans

omg ... this is so great ... i am laughing and laughing ...

Hi bbs!

I'm kinda still here but mostly can't be arsed. The same ol stuff in threads doesn't appeal.

hey you! every so often i think about this post you made in response to some ilx woman's shitty boyfriend issues that was something like "there is no laurel buffet" like, you are not obligated to be accommodating to the dude, if you aren't getting what you want from the relationship. ... i think?

Wow, I had forgotten that quip but I like it! I hope I said it about one of my own shitty ex-boyfriends tbh.

i think it was inspired by one of your own iirc

It's a long list.

I'm personally in a space of wondering whether it's worth trying to have relationships w men because I'm just so tired of having *that* conversation over and over again. I think this is driven by my having basically moved in with my bf of many years during the pandemic. We're not great for each other 24/7, we need some space between us. I've been gone for about 2 weeks traveling and stuff, and tbh it sounds like he has a really healthy routine set up for himself and I feel the same.

It's more expensive for me to live in the city so staying w him was something of a cost-saving measure while I'm trying to get employed again. Not ideal.

Is it that the two week break made you realize you don't want to return to how the relationship was? or that you can only see the relationship growing/ continuing if you have preplanned time apart.

Let's just say for now that the reason it was possible for us to make the 8 year mark was that we weren't together all the time and, speaking for myself, I had time to nourish myself with my other friendships and wasn't trying to get so much of my socialization from one person.

yeah, and I guess it is also a difficult thing to gauge because of the extremes of the last two years.

if i'd had the vocab during my teen years i might have gone with non-binary bcuz of not identifying with any of the standard """woman""" archetypes, but now it's whatever

totally, I was the same (I probably posted about this a bit way upthread)! and welcome cat!

ay! (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

i remember that laurel post too! i took it as, like, prospective s.o.’s don’t get to pick and choose which parts of you to take on, it’s the whole enchilada o nada, and i thought that was very cool

yes! your memory is probably more accurate.

I also remember! Such an apt expression, love it.

I take anti-anxiety meds (which also help with some low-level OCD stuff) and I don't remember things as well as I used to ... for the most part, this is a very good thing.

the meds also enable me to scroll past and/or ignore annoying and potentially enraging ilx content without having to figure out how to use killfile. It's kinda like my approach to alcohol consumption -- try to do it in moderation with "cold turkey" being the last resort if I can't do moderation.

yeah, and I guess it is also a difficult thing to gauge because of the extremes of the last two years.

― Yerac

yeah COVID deffo played a big part in tanking my marriage. as far as meds i've started shit-tons over the past couple years. finally acknowledged that yeah i'm bipolar, started taking a mood stabilizer. got diagnosed with adhd, taking adderall for that. the stuff that's helped most is the HRT, honestly. it's changed the way i process anger _so much_. like, being angry makes me physically weak now.

what mood stabilizer?

lamictal

hi! still intermittently here, mostly just lurking. hello everyone! hope you're well! hope absent former regulars are well too! hi & welcome cat!

if i'd had the vocab during my teen years i might have gone with non-binary bcuz of not identifying with any of the standard """woman""" archetypes, but now it's whatever

Yeah, add me to this list. Might conceivably have gone further than "non-binary"; when I was a v small kid I really wanted to be a boy, or even thought I was a boy and there was just some mystifying cosmic clerical error resulting in everyone else pretending otherwise. Loved when old ladies mistook me for a boy and hated when my mum corrected them. As a teenager I heard the words "is that a boy or a girl" bellowed down the street or across a party at me pretty frequently and cursed my fat hamstery freckled cheeks and ginger hair for not being gamine and gothic enough to pull off the cool kind of androgynous.

And now I'm content to be a straight cis middle-aged woman, or at least if I'm not content it's not due to the gender part. But when I was younger I had some proto-terfy ideas because I thought "I've never felt like a woman but nobody gave me any choice about it, so anyone who thinks they do feel like a woman is making some kind of category error", and you know what? I was wrong, the category error was on my part, and I'm sorry.

(esp sorry bcz I think I posted some dumb offensive shit on ILX along those lines which I apologise for and hope nobody ever reads again, including me, so I'm not going to go looking so I can apologise in the right place tbh)

So yes, I fell for some early terfy "what about the tomboys?" articles/sentiment, and then noticed a lot of the people who said that were apparently very cool with harrassing trans people & unsure kids & insufficiently feminine-presenting women alike, and now apparently they're having horrible ideas about checking teenage girls' underpants before sporting events - so really fuck those people, and good for the tomboys and the unsure kids if they have more options open to them to explore and hopefully a more accepting world to explore them in (or not, I mean OK, some signs aren't good, maybe even a lot of them, but there's still been a lot of progress in this respect since I was a teenager). All for it. Good luck to 'em.

Sorry, went off on one there. Just babbling away to myself, same as it ever was.

Yeah, add me to this list. Might conceivably have gone further than "non-binary"; when I was a v small kid I really wanted to be a boy, or even thought I was a boy and there was just some mystifying cosmic clerical error resulting in everyone else pretending otherwise. Loved when old ladies mistook me for a boy and hated when my mum corrected them. As a teenager I heard the words "is that a boy or a girl" bellowed down the street or across a party at me pretty frequently and cursed my fat hamstery freckled cheeks and ginger hair for not being gamine and gothic enough to pull off the cool kind of androgynous.

― a passing spacecadet, Tuesday, July 5, 2022 12:04 PM (yesterday)

So this is the thing, this is the difficult thing for me to talk about.

It took me 43 years, give or take, to figure out something which is in retrospect blindingly obvious: I'm a woman. Why did it take me 43 years? Because I was misinformed about gender, misinformed about what determines it, what it _is_. Specifically, I was _not_ ever told that gender and genital anatomy are not the same thing. It took me a _very long time_ to understand, accept, and internalize this basic fact. The idea that gender and genital anatomy were the same thing was a fundamental, axiomatic part of my worldview. The truth of the matter is that I was, myself, transphobic, that I still struggle with what is termed "internalized transphobia". The false beliefs I internalized are _persistent_, persistent in myself most of all.

The difficult thing is knowing that the deck was not just stacked against me, but against fucking _everybody_. I never really got to ask the question, consider the possibility. And by the time I could, well, I had a lot to lose from it. It was, really, desperation that led me to exploring my gender. I'd been miserable, fucked up, for a very long time, for no reason I could figure out, and I'd tried pretty much everything else. CW: self-harm I figured it'd kill me, but fuck it, I figured I didn't have long to live anyway.

And this is in some ways the worse lie, the lie that being trans is _bad_. That we're _cursed_ and _miserable_ and that gender exploration is, for a lot of us, a last resort.

That's painful for me to watch. People have the absolute right to self-determination, but something like gender? That should be a _first_ resort, not a _last_ resort. The bias was so pervasive, so universal, where I think... Honestly? I think _every single cis person_ should re-evaluate their gender identity. Ask the hard questions. People ask us over and over again "But what _makes_ you trans?", and the snappy answer is "OK, but what _makes_ you cis?". Both those questions are stupid questions. They're not answerable, and we don't need to have answers.

Even the _labels_ get in the way, a lot of times. Gender is experimental, but there's this huge bias against experiment. Right now most of the people who question come to the same conclusion, and I think that's a _systemic problem_. I am really in favor of genderfuck, not just for "trans people" or people with "gender dysphoria" but for ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY. Get a new haircut. Take a new name, new pronouns, different clothes, different approaches to body care, not _because_ of anything but just for the hell of it. Because we were told it was the worst thing on earth, but in fact it doesn't do anybody any real harm, and it can do us a _hell of a lot of good_.

When I see someone say something like what you say above, spacecadet... I know this is dangerous, I know this might be taken the wrong way, but I would _encourage_ you to see what happens if you rephrase that "might have gone" to "might go". I'm not _diagnosing_ or offering any _opinion_ in any way on these things, but the things you list off are... pretty common experiences a lot of trans and gender diverse people have.

Because here's lie #3, to the extent that any of us were taught about "gender dysphoria", what we were taught about it was... grossly _inadequate_ and _misleading_. I think it would particularly be of benefit for everyone, cis, trans, everyone, to understand gender dysphoria more accurately. The Gender Dysphoria Bible at genderdysphoria.fyi is a great resource. Again, this is _not_ something _anybody else_ can diagnose in someone else, any more than someone else can diagnose me with The Gay, but most of us didn't have the tools at our disposal for healthy understanding of our gender, and nowadays these tools are available.

Not trying to get into your shit here. This is just stuff everyone... ought to know, but most people don't.

idk for me, a lot of it was "why would I want to be the gender category that is marginalized and oppressed? why would anyone want to be this if they could choose?" I think the reason I had gender dysphoria growing up and periodically as an adult, is less about wanting to be male, and to have male anatomy, but because men had power, had more opportunities, and that's what I wanted. I wanted to be able to drive a forklift and play drums, I didn't want to be able to grow a beard or have a dick.

I am seeing a lot more people in my community get gender affirming surgery (and doing crowdfunding if its something they can't afford to pay for), which makes me think this is something that is way more accessible now than in decades prior ... which I think is great. I feel like that shouldn't be a barrier, if it allows someone to be more comfortable in their own body.