no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Sorry yall, I got the Pfizer and I experienced no side effects, I haven't had a period in ages and I didn't have one then, and my skin is excellent right now especially considering my personal habits which are not the healthiest. But I did pick up a new cleanser and moisturizer from TJ Maxx's sale section so I credit cosmetic science.

I got moderna and my period was same as always, maybe the mood symptoms were a little worse? Hard to say why but I doubt it was related to vaccine tbh. Prob just good old me.

i also got moderna

fucking period fairy brings me my menses 2 weeks ahead of schedule today wee
it’s the turd in the punchbowl that has been this week

but explains the terrifying/crazy mood swing i had on monday, like fully at my desk crying at 10am for no reason, SOBBING watching bobs burgers at lunchtime, knowing there was no reason just thinking “ok THIS now!?!”

i have had a couple really bad ones usually a week or so post-period too

old lady hormones are just gonna be semi regularly one on now i guess yay

I had the first full period I've had in 3 or 4 months last month. And it was a heavy but painless one, like I always had. I'm 50. This should be over by now.

i apologize for the fact that the period fairy was trash

also apologize for acknowledging "it's the turd in the punchbowl" can be sung to the tune of "It's the eye of the tiger"

lmao that just cheered me up infinitely

I AM TOO GODDAMN OLD TO BE FEELING LIKE AN INSECURE ADOLESCENT.

It looks like I'm going to be treated as an adorable lost child for the rest of my life. I feel like one always.

So there are, what, half a dozen of us left on ILX?

i think so, yeah

o we doing a non-boy roll call? i now formally announce that i am not a boy

it is actually a scientific fact that cats are not boys and dogs are not girls 🌠 ~the more u kno~

So there are, what, half a dozen of us left on ILX?

xp - uh, no offense, but we know you're not actually a cat. If you're a non-cis male human IRL, then welcome here.

Plenty of dogs are girls, to say otherwise is nonsense!
I guess I’m still here.

"I am not a cat."
(I'm bigender, male and female. So I guess I still belong here.)

every so often I seriously re-consider my life choices ... it used to be in a "what a waste of time" way, but now it's more like, "if I had done x, then it would be easier today to do y, but if I wanted to do y now, could I?"

So there are, what, half a dozen of us left on ILX?

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie)

2020 was fucking _rough_

I'm still here. But yeah.

I'm here too, but mostly lurk anyways.

i was horribly forming a "joek" abt how felis catus & canis familiaris ≠ homo sapiens and this joek has landed, not on all fours, but on its big dumb face

but ye, +1 cisgirl

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

there was a time there when i'd shaved half my head and kept my hair long on the other side and the panic/confusion/dismay on the faces of occasional squares who couldn't immediately categorize me was v. gratifying

here's hoping the girlxors of yesteryear have found more fulfilling timewasters

Sometimes I read a thread here and there. But they are always disappointing. 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.

feelin so called out right now, lol

This was totally about the rest of the board, I honestly just skimmed your posts and thought you were making a random gme-related joke not really seeing your name in ().

Sometimes I read a thread here and there. But they are always disappointing. 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.

― Yerac

i try but some of the cis guys here can be... challenging to engage with

go to the gay thread and see a bunch of guys talking about how much they love balls

i mean don't get me wrong i'm happy for them i just can't really relate?

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.