no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I am autistic, so it's sometimes really hard to separate out 'OCD tendencies' from 'executive function at 0, cannot achieve state change from current activity'.

Combine that with rona-based social isolation, where literally any social contact, even 'squabbling with people on the interwebs' feels like a boost to the brain chemicals, and that is a total recipe for being unable to stop the scrolling.

(LOL, I literally deactivated my twitter a few days ago, in a desperate attempt to try to stop the constant rat-like cage-pacing which was both alleviation of and cause of lots of the anxiety, but... here I am back on ILX instead ;_;)

Like, how can we do this in a way that lampshades the power structures in the entertainment industry as a site of fantasy - but that doesn't a) shame the desires and fantasies of the "girls" in question

You should contribute if you feel up to it! I was actually thinking of you the other day when I was being interviewed by a journalist friend about my experiences with this stuff. ... Anyway, I went in.

part of that interview was about "toxic masculinity" -- and this goes back to what we were talking about earlier w/r/t queerness and gender -- and I told my friend that, in the context of male dominated cultures where "toxic masculinity" plays a major role, it isn't just cis-men that can practice it. Like, during the time period I was being interviewed about, I was one of the only cis-female venue-operators in the scene, and those were my, lol, soft butch years ... because I felt the need to present as male and assume this masculine behavior and mindset in order to "fit in" or "comply with community standards" ... because it's the dominant culture, toxic masculinity and masculinity, in general, is not just the province of cis-men ... similar to how "white supremacy" is something that blacks/POC can internalize and practice, even though they aren't white.

Yeah, thanks for bringing up those points, they are very salient!

I think I need to cogitate and think on it more. There was another thread on this previously, like more of a discussions / "what can be done" type thread that I so nearly jumped in on. To try to say, "these industries are in the business of commodifying sexual desire; you cannot separate desire from the basic structure of their existence. The power structures are bad and can become intensely abusive, because power corrupts, but this whole thing is predicated on selling sex, selling the illusion of intimacy" (my friend who invented crowdfunding, said she took the entire model from the pornographic industry, that the very basic idea was not selling music, but selling intimacy.)

You can address the power structures and the imbalances, but you *have* to acknowledge the forces of desire at work here. Desire is complicated.

But as soon as you say "desire is complicated" it's like you are wading straight into the dirty business of making excuses for rapists and abusers, whether you intend to or not.

x-post will probably think on that, too

hahah also, when a band comes through and starts loading in their gear, and asks to talk to the sound person ... this is what I reasoned ... they are more likely to respect someone wearing a black band t-shirt, dickies, and combat boots as opposed to someone wearing a cute dress and make-up. ... Still though, some of them really struggled with the fact that the sound person was a woman. ... Even the most entrenched ones "got it" when they first saw me and I was actually setting up the PA.

B -- sorry, I was typing the other thing while you posted -- and the thread itself, it also gets into different types of fandom, like -- I don't want to dredge up the gazillion different discussions about "how we talk about the music we like and why we like it" ... but it often confuses me when I see so many people posting about music they like devoid of that sex/desire / intimacy motivation that shaped a lot of why I like what I like.

because I felt the need to present as male and assume this masculine behavior and mindset in order to "fit in" or "comply with community standards" ... because it's the dominant culture, toxic masculinity and masculinity, in general, is not just the province of cis-men ... similar to how "white supremacy" is something that blacks/POC can internalize and practice, even though they aren't white.

This is why I want every man, woman and genderqueer on the planet (or at least ~The West~) to read Down Girl by Kate Manne. Misogyny is not just a thing that "men", cis or otherwise, do. It is a system that wraps up *everyone* in its internal logic, unless you take constant and vigilant steps to avoid it, fight it, counter it. That many women (cis and trans women) can internalise it completely, not to mention trans men and sometimes enbies. Often, the *only* power that seems available to cis women in particular, within the structure of male supremacy, is to conform to the standards of misogyny - either by becoming impossibly perfectly feminine and weaponising femininity against women who are less feminine; or by invoking the ~Laddette~ and playing masculinity harder than the boys (lord knows I did) back in the 90s - even though the small power one can access through playing that loophole girl is *always* on sufferance, can always be revoked at any time, and *will* be revoked if you ever actually challenge male supremacy in any meaningful way.

I don't wanna talk about misogyny any more, I want to talk about shagging pop stars and collecting dick like rare seven inches, because I was never cute enough to be part of that scene, but wow, was I fascinated by it?

but it often confuses me when I see so many people posting about music they like devoid of that sex/desire / intimacy motivation that shaped a lot of why I like what I like.

LOL, I remember starting a thread on ILM where I was like "I actually feel sorry for people who don't experience the power of sex / desire / intimacy in music" and of course I got crucified for that, even though it's true...

oh and to answer your question from way earlier -- Wahl is a solid brand of clippers -- like the Toyota of clippers, or the Fender of clippers, or the Korg of clippers -- respectable and reliable.

Yeah, I now have a brand new set of Wahl clippers, and an undercut. (I still haven't worked out what to do with the mop on top, but at least the awful hot sweaty clutter at the base of my neck that was bothering me so much is gone.)

xp -- oh geez, it's always weird to me when there are those big retrospective polls of artists/bands I was a fan of as a young person and people go on about "the guitar tone" or the recording quality when for me, it was like, this song inspired so many vivid romantic fantasies for me at the time.

xp THE BEST. I LOVE HAVING A CLEAN NECK!

this is on my agenda for the weekend btw -- clean neck self care

THERE WAS LIKE TWO SOLID INCHES OF HAIR BACK THERE!!!! It was so disgusting. I don't even know how that happened because I just trimmed it with a pair of scissors at the start of lockdown?

But wow, number 1 on the back of the neck is the best velvety feeling ever, and now I can have it WHENEVER I WANT!

(I am going to be stimming with these damn clippers all the time now)

i can't deny that I have experienced arousal with that number 1 back of the neck thing.

Whenever I step onto pretty much any thread except this one, I feel like... have I taken powerful hallucinogens that render everything I say completely unintelligble and garbled, or have the people around me taken some powereful hallucinogens that cause people to hear random things unrelated to, or even the opposite of what I'm saying and doing? It's a genuine mind-trip, to see what I write, and how people choose to interpret it. Seriously, I haven't slept in like 4 days, so am I going crazy here, or is this actually as bizarre as it seems to me?

i think past history is part of it, and also, idk maybe it's an age thing? i have no idea ... i am reading the pushback and going wtf along with you, for the most part.

i know i am at the age where i have to make an effort to change habits and language, and that things that "were acceptable" are not anymore. It's kinda the one thing that is a disadvantage to being middle-aged, whereas so much else is way better than being a young person. ... though I think I have at least 5 yrs before the menopause so ... I am trying to enjoy the fuck out of the rest of my 40s.

It's weird, because I actually have a ton of younger friends from other messageboards who are trans and nonbinary, and... they don't behave like this? We have reasonable conversations, and they actually view me as some kind of... "wow, a 50 year old nonbinary person!" like they love that I'm old and I am still this way, because it validates that it's not just some ~Tumblr fashion thing~ that we have been around forever, even if we didn't have words for ourselves back then.

Maybe it is a specific ILX thing. The level of projection from these people is seriously just off the scale.

ILX has always been full of bullies, it is in some way kind of a haven for bullies, but this feels like... the people who used to bully me in the olden days were just plain old misogynists and transphobes who couldn't stand the idea of a "woman" who behaved "like a boy".

It's bizarre when the bullying and the mobbing and the dogpiling is coming from inside your own community.

it makes me question whether healthy respectful conflict resolution is possible ... idk ... or going back to the part of the whole call-out/cancel process where there is supposedly accountability and reparations and healing, but that seems to be the most difficult part for us (at least in America).

The way that the #metoo thing is wending its way down to more subculture musicians, I am seeing friends coming to terms with the fact their bandmates and friends who are in other bands have done shitty things that aren't acceptable, and that they have to hold the bandmate/friend accountable and the messiness that is separating the person from the behavior, and caring for someone that has done a horrible thing, and having that process be somewhat public ...

I'm just feeling really down on the fact that it seems like it's perfectly fine for other people to scream, to swear, to call me names, call me a "piece of shit", to tell me to fuck off, and to act... unbelievably rude and aggressive and just over the top behaviour towards me, and apparently that doesn't reflect badly on them.

But for me, to like, deviate from absolute perfect, impossible precion and politeness in any way, means that I deserve every piece of abuse that gets hurled at me.

The double standards are just... wow, they really are something, huh.

Sorry, I'm gonna come back to the callout/accountability process of subculture musicians at another time. It's exhausting dealing with this.

Reminds me of that old chestnut - if you want to know where power lies, it's visible in who is allowed to display anger, and how much.

if you want to know where power lies, it's visible in who is allowed to display anger, and how much.

definitely!

...speaking of badly behaved subculture musicians, it applies there, too!

Whose rage is acceptable and even legitimises them; and whose rage totally disqualifies them.

ah yes ... the righteous anger vs. being the "crazy bitch"

There are like four threads going on at the moment all going round the same circles and I really, really don't get what ILX is about sometimes.

Neither do I, Kinder, neither do I.

The way that the #metoo thing is wending its way down to more subculture musicians, I am seeing friends coming to terms with the fact their bandmates and friends who are in other bands have done shitty things that aren't acceptable, and that they have to hold the bandmate/friend accountable and the messiness that is separating the person from the behavior, and caring for someone that has done a horrible thing, and having that process be somewhat public ...

It's much easier to produce the Correct Opinion when you're talking about the behaviour of Jimmy Page or Bobby Gillespie or That Guy With The Haircut From That Popular Band whose name I've forgotten (though obviously, some people cannot make the leaps through 'I like this person's music' and 'does liking a bad person's music make me a bad person?' to 'bad people can make stuff I like, but it's important not to dismiss or deny the badness of their actions').

When it's 'that guy who's the Missing Stair in your own scene' it is much, much harder, because those leaps become so personal. It's no longer 'does liking music by the bad person make me a bad person' - it's 'did I turn a blind eye to stuff that was happening under my nose; did I ignore or downplay or make light of some shitty stuff; am I personally implicated in this; is this a badness in *me* that goes beyond "well I like some questionable music"' That it's not actually about the bad behaviour of the shitty dude, or even about *their* accountability - the discomfort is about recognising one's own complicity in allowing the missing stair to go unaccounted for so long.

And I think a lot of the "well, any dude would act the same in the same situation" is a kind of handwaving way of both admitting and denying one's own complicity - "any of us could have done it" means no one is really culpable for it.

There is discomfort in 'the messiness that is separating the person from the behavior' (that shit is difficult) - but looking at yourself and realising that messiness has spattered all over you, whether you think of yourself as ~one of the good ones~ or not is, I think, what makes the process so difficult for many people to handle.

Is this something I would have to read ILM to understand?

Haha, yeah probably. It's exactly what you would expect from a clash of music nerds and #MeToo

Today, in my continued quest to re-examine the most ~difficult~ of the demon radical feminists of yores, I've been reading Barbara Walker - Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, and I'm having such a fun time with it. It is both so charmingly old school ~new age wymxn~ in a way that now seems adorably quaint, and at the same time, still kinda startling - or at least, for me, who was a priest's child at a seriously religious school, raised on serious Critical Bible Studious and Greek Myths.

#PostsVeryMuchInCharacter

Is this something I would have to read ILM to understand?

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Saturday, August 1, 2020 8:50 AM (three hours ago)

in summary, previously celebrity musicians are targeted by #metoo callouts. In the past month or so, less famous musicians have been called out and smaller labels are cancelling acts, so the focus has gone from "oh shit, this guy in my fave band when I was a teenager" to "this guy my friend used to be in a band with/date"

and, to show my age, lots of people in my cohort thinking, "fuck, what would I have done at the time, if #metoo had been a thing 10-20 years ago? Good thing I'm no longer in a band and am a boring middle class wage slave with a kid"

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/592f4f5a2994cac7907b461b/1551897574685-MZ3WGIZM2NJJSV05BCZW/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kFMMQA9k7Q_pQQJjdOYnlXB7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0mhydAgiKdIfeAoxVgE7c7oK07iYyEOLLXo4fTIvdjyaFEF5moreGOi38zza8M7wUw/IMG-3856+%281%29.JPG

Is a passing spacecadet still around?

harbl: yes! It blows my mind that the Myths and Secrets author is also the Treasury of Knitting Patterns author.

And she a created a Tarot deck!

wait it IS the same person?!?!

It is!

i own this one, love the cover photo lol
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51HFA0NP5QL._SX374_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Harbl!!!! Tokyo Rosemary!!!!

Yes, it is the same Barbara Walker. See, I knew the Goddess / Tarot stuff, but had no idea that she had this whole history as a serious knitting star? That's really amazing, so cool, but it also kinda makes sense.

I'm really enjoying the book, and I'm actually kinda surprised at how much I like it, and am learning from it? I'm confronting my own biases - as a 70s child, I often encoutered goddess worship through hippies, and by the time of the 80s, when I was a teen, the whole ~Earth Mother~ thing had become an insult, a term of dismissal towards women. (And I totally bought into that, and went along with it, because so many of the punk dudes I ran with in the 80s loathed hippies and all they stood for.) An interest in goddess-worship was really common among the kinda spooky goth chicks with tarot decks I was romantically interested in, but my general attitude was 'sure, the femininst aspects of this are kinda interesting, but most of it is fantasy novel bosh.' (I placed it firmly in 'Fiction' and 'feminist retelling' along with The Mists of Avalon, which I did actually love at the time.) Then as the 80s became the 90s, goddess-worship seemed like it had been entirely collapsed into New Age, and New Age was swept out like so much garbage with the 21st Century, as ~Skeptick~ and Cool Rational Atheist became the fashionable thing to be?

Coming back to Barbara Walker with 30 years of experience of systemic misogyny under my belt and having read a ton more feminist theory and queer theory; and also reading Myths and Secrets seriously and sequentially rather than "haha, let's read about male gods who tried to become pregnant and gave birth through their penises!!!" dipping in, I'm finding her a far more interesting writer, thinker and theorist than I ever gave her credit for. (And I'm also finding her dismissal says more about the dismissers than it does about her work - all the reviews of "she's so biased I can't even read her!!!" and it's like... hmmm, why is it that you find "goddess worship was everywhere" to be so biased, but you read these translations of Greek myths that are so full of rape stories and their 'just so' justifications, and you don't even interrogate *their* bias? Why are women and their theories about Patriarchy always subjected to levels of scrutiny and suspicion and accusations of bias, that theories in support of Patriarchy never are?)

Sorry, I'm monologuing and hobby-horsing here. It actually makes a lot of sense that she's a knitting expert, like 1) her taxonomy and research skills are first class. I bet she's great at taxonomising and collecting and explaining knitting techniques. 2) she's totally into the whole 'women were the o.g. source of generativity and creativity, let's reclaim and celebrate traditional woman-coded creative projects.'

I love people who knit, I think it's an amazing skill. I am really kind of sad my wrists aren't up to it. Thank you for this knowledge of the other side of Barbara Walker.

p.s. I do see Passing Spacecadet occasionally on the UK Politics threads but that is a space to enter with extreme caution! (Which you can definitely say about most ILX politics threads.)

And Sarahell, I don't want to blow on embers of a clusterfuck that seems to have finally died down. I don't actually think that the difference is *solely* age, though age is certainly a component which will become obvious with further explanation.

The internecine struggle did not actually seem to be between 'old queers' and 'young queers' - it is between 'people whose primary experience of queer spaces are physical, face to face, in the flesh' and 'people whose primacy experience of queer spaces are Extremely Online'. As I've said before, I do not think that one is any more real or genuine or valid than the other - but the modes and basic expectations and styles of engagement are very different.

(It's not that I'm not Extremely Online, wow, I am definitely OCD compulsively so, in a way that probably isn't healthy. But the bulk of my Queer Space experiences have been face to face interactions, and the bulk of my Online Life hasn't really been Queer, it's been Music Nerd.)

Trying to stop this before it becomes wall-o-text. That's a v v big difference between online and flesh space - in flesh spaces people can *see* me listening very intently, nodding in agreement, drawing people out to elaborate before reacting, before thinking and producing a statement in response. Online, it just looks like a monologue.

Back to the #metoo callout stuff - wow, yeah, I'm actually quite grateful I'm no longer in contact with most people from my music scene days, to not have to see that kind of 'thank fuck I don't have to confront the past" reaction. Unhelpful! It's bad enough - the one person I'm still in touch with telling me second-hand reports of how dudes I was in bands and music scenes with 30 years ago are now raging Trump supporters, but thinking back, they were always kinda whiney and entitled back in the 90s, the whiney entitlement has found a different outlet now?

branwell, this is pretty irrelevant to this and any convo, but i have a persistent memory of hanging out with you in person where we were talking about how "nutrageous" is a hilarious name for a candy bar and you said "this is a nutrage!!!!" and i loled so much and think of it often (every time anyone says something is outrageous tbh)

it's good to pop back to ilx after a Cis White Dude-induced sabbatical and see this thread thriving, and Branwell, it's good to see you here.

I feel what's been said here strongly. I just want to find some way to enjoy silly casual things, to talk about ordinary stuff without being steamrolled by some superfragile cis white dude, to live my goddamn life without having to be in the vanguard of some fucking revolution 24/7. so yes i love this thread and everyone in it.

Kaaaaaaaate!!!! Katey-Kate K8!!! I'm happy to see you back here, too. yeah, cosign - sometimes there is a real need to just... OMG, I just want to be able to enjoy some stuff in my life without having to wade through an endless swamp of misogyny to get there. What's bringing you joy at the moment, babe?

Roxy, I was going to insist "I have no memory of this, was I drunk?!?!?" and then had a very strong sense memory of you and I sitting in a bar that had, like, a weird mezzanine upstairs that was kind of somewhere between a mistrel's gallery and a treehouse (?!?!?) and both of us going "This is a nutrage!" in Mighty Boosh voices and pissing ourselves laughing?

oh god, Branwell, I can't remember the last time anybody asked me that! i got _so_ much cool shit going on right now. so. fucking. much.

i got my new birth certificate in the mail! it took my birth state forever to get it out to me, i sent the request in before covid and like a couple weeks ago they sent an apologetic email saying that there had been a "system error"... yeah, i get it, lotta shit at my job got kinda thrown on the back burner during all this. anyway, i'm not legally non-binary on both my birth certificate _and_ my driver's license! now to figure out how the hell to make this work with social security... they don't recognize "non-binary" as a gender option but will update your gender to your legal gender on your birth certificate or driver's license... which is "non-binary"... :shrug:

my therapist also finished my gcs referral letter... it's still a long road to go, i gotta have my consult and then figure out how long it will be until i can actually get the surgery. also, less than a month till my endo appointment! my t has been all out of whack, way too high, and all my doctor knew to do about it was to up my spiro, which wasn't doing crap. anyway, hopefully getting my hormones into better balance will help.

the good thing about my time away from ilx is that i did actually get some sleep, like a lot of sleep, actually. i hadn't really slept through the night since, like, march, so i had a week of sleeping like 12 hours in a row. and then when i woke up i was super spaced out and groggy, but still, i needed it. just hoping i can get a little caught up with, like, work.

i just finished 100%ing this fun jigsaw game called "glass masquerade" - it's relaxing, casual, got a nice learning curve to it. i love the art even if some of it is, uh, pretty disturbing, particularly in the sequel which has this sort of "dark wonderland" aesthetic to the stained glass pictures. next on the docket i got dali and magritte physical jigsaw puzzles, they're 1000 piece and i haven't quite been doing up to them yet, and the "pirates of barracuda bay" lego kit that finally showed up.

speaking of shit on backorder, i think we may actually be able to get our hands on a ring fit... i hope it'll help, wii fit got my bmi into a "normal" range back when i was doing it, so hopefully ring fit will help me with the same thing. my bmi hasn't been _too_ bad considering all the ice cream i've been stress eating, but keeping it low is pretty important for gcs (by the way for anyone confused about all the trans jargon i'm using feel free to ask and i'll be glad to explain), and also the more belly fat i can get rid of the less dysphoric i'll be.

haven't gone clothes shopping since before COVID hit, which means that i'm kind of low on summer clothes. i've been leaving the house every day for my second round of TMS, which I'm almost done with... no idea if it's working, too many confounding variables at play. really hoping i can get up the energy to go thrifting sometime soon, given that my body's changed a lot in the past year. i also really need to get properly measured for a bra, that abrathatfits thing is totally inaccurate for trans bodies. did get a new straw hat - since i can't really wear wigs for the TMS, and since it's still up in the air as to whether i'll get enough hairline regrowth on the finasteride or whether i'll have to get some hair transplant action going on, giant-brimmed straw hats have been my go-to. maybe a bit more of the hyper-signposted "early transition" vibe than i'd like, but other people seem to accept me so it makes it easier for me to accept myself.

the wife and i have also been thinking about getting some recumbent trikes. we tried some out on a vacation years ago and she said then that she'd get me one if i bought her a house, and we bought a house and ever since she's been encouraging me. there's this queer couple (maybe they're not a couple, but there's two of them and they're both flying the gay pride flag on their bikes) i see biking around our neighborhood on recumbents occasionally, haven't talked to them or anything but they're awesome, especially given that our trump signs and "blue line" flags are not unknown in my neighborhood. :(

music wise i've really gotten into gabber in the last year. i feel like somebody needs to do a dune-based gabber project and call it "jom gabber".

annnnyway... i feel like i had a fair bit of stuff pent up there. :)

Haha, it's funny, I'm generally OK with most of the trans jargon, but TMS really threw me, and I was like "I don't think I recognise that one?!?!?" and had to google, and found out it's not a trans thing at all. (I hope it is working, even if you haven't been able to tell?)

I'm glad you've got most of the form-changing done (the UK is so backwards we don't even have nonbinary markers for common documents?) And I hope you can see someone who can do a better job with hormones. Wishing you good luck with progressing on the GCS front!

Insomnia... ah christ insomnia will fuck with you. I don't know if I ended up back on ILX so much because I had insomnia so bad, or if ILX just causes or exacerbates existing insomnia. The last clusterfuck just sent it over the edge. After the thread was locked (I think it just completed an OCD loop in my head, like 'you don't have to pay attention to this any more' so I could switch off) last night I got 7-8 hours for the first time in a week and I still have unpaid sleep debt, but I felt so much more human. Annoyingly, my hyperacusis gets worse with insomnia, and then my hyperacusis prevents me from sleeping, vicious circle.

What are incumbent bikes like? I really enjoy cycling, but I haven't been on my bike at all this year. (Not even Covid, just some bad London traffic experiences that made me too nervous to go back out for a while.) How are they like for visibility, in traffic? Or is that what the flags are for, to alert drivers to the presence of a bike with a really low ground profile?

Jigsaw puzzles! We always used to have jigsaw puzzles in the office to reduce stress and encourage inter-team socialising. I don't have the space to do one in my flat, but I miss them.

i just finished 100%ing this fun jigsaw game called "glass masquerade" - it's relaxing, casual, got a nice learning curve to it.

i also really need to get properly measured for a bra, that abrathatfits thing is totally inaccurate for trans bodies.

do you have in your mind what you want from the bra? Like, do you just want coverage? Or do you want lift/shaping to visually demarcate "boobs" from "chest" for a more femme look?

Branwell: They're just bikes you ride while sitting down instead of standing up. My aunt has one because she has back problems. I'm pretty badly dyspraxic and have never been able to balance myself properly on an upright two-seater. Now that I think about it, I reckon the flags probably _are_ there for visibility. That makes sense.

Non-binary markers are really hit and miss here in the States. There really isn't any acknowledgement on a federal level that I know of - it's just something many different states have undertaken on their own. Fortunately for me I wasn't born in Ohio or anything awful like that.

sarahell - Well, since I started transitioning I've been wearing light shapewear camis. Nothing terribly extreme - just something to help flatten my belly a smidge (I have reluctantly accepted that I will never be one of those ladies who can rock a bare midriff) and give a bit more definition to my breasts. They're still more or less working for me, but I'd like to have better measurements just so I could try out various different styles and see how they work for me. My understanding is that basically any department store would be glad to give me a proper sizing; it's just motivating myself to head all the way over to one that's the problem.