Notices by Vivian, Venus Pirate 🏳️‍⚧️🧋 (willow@chaosfem.tw)

Oh right it’s pride month! Hey, cis people: go frustrate nazis, please.

San Francisco Bay Area folks on #PrEP, specifically injectable PrEP like #Apretude: may I ask you what clinic you go to for your injections? (DM me for my Signal account if that feels more comfortable.) I would like to know what my options are if I’m away from my east coast clinic when I’m due for a shot.

Bonus points for places that accept private, non-HMO (i.e. not Kaiser) insurance.

Please #boost for reach!

(Honorable mention for recommendations you haven’t personally confirmed yourself, but please don’t point me to a search engine - plenty of places offer PrEP that’s actually only pills.)

Okay, if I wanted to self-host a server that was defederated from everything, or maybe a small collection of servers (mastodon and pixelfed, maybe) so I could have a safe space for my kids and their friends to do social media stuff, … do I know anyone who’d be willing to point me to an instruction manual suitable for someone who is NOT a linux sysadmin?

#TDOV #PSA - Cis folks, trans people don’t like it when you compliment us on how brave and resilient we are, because the only reason we have to be brave and resilient is because you don’t stand up to other cis people and tell them to leave us alone. So go do that, please.

Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.

#Boost #CallToAction

It’s too late to stop me.

#ThingsYouCantUnsay #trans #transition

I already did it.

I’m beyond their checkpoints.

They can still kill me. They can still cage me. They can still martyr me. And I haven’t reach the end of my journey.

But they can’t stop me from self-actualizing.

They, here a pronoun in its multiple and nameless form, affirming no one. The agents of the patriarchy. Everyday people, when they act from the internalized patriarchal norms they’ve been inundated with. They, who declare me to be their enemy. They, whom I reluctantly accept as my enemies.

I’m a binary woman, and I walked heedlessly into a backscatter x-ray machine today, physically transformed by the banality and wonder of hormones, the magic and sparkle of fashion, and the skill and compassion of a trans surgeon. I no longer fear that my body will be misunderstood as a different gender.

I am a woman, though. I certainly fear that my body will be violated by patriarchy, as all people ought to fear.

Backscatter x-rays are a crystalized shard of patriarchal violence. They enforce rigid gendered forms and violate the bodily autonomy of everyone who walks through them. Whatever veils and rules may ostensibly protect the privacy of the victims, the core function of those machines is to classify everyone into acceptable or suspect body shapes.

I happen to be affirmed by my body being a shape that is, coincidentally, on the approved list of shapes. I’m grateful to fate for this privilege, but my outrage for others simmers. This is not how we should live.

And so I stride, at first slowly, as my suture-lines knit together, careful not to pop a stitch, and in time with stronger steps, through the airport security checkpoint and its representation as the last gate of my medical transition and towards clearings, small points of higher ground, places to shine. I’m a walking demonstration of the possible, and I want people to know it.

I’m not looking for the tallest places around - I don’t want to pit myself against that amount of attention. I try to have a realistic understanding of my limits, and I want my fire to last. The longer I burn, the more people can see me and learn from me.

But I do plan to burn. I’ll not run and hide; I will burn my brightest here, in the culture I was raised in. It is here I’ll stand, confident that my life can mean something if I live out loud, with pride and self-esteem.

1/2 (please boost both if you boost)

To my enemies, I say, “Burn me.”

My flesh will sear. I will stride no more.

But my story will glint in the eyes of the crowd. They, who are not defined by the moments in which they are my enemies. They, who yearn for something more than patriarchy allows them. They, who can support me when they act from their better selves.

They will remember the woman who affirmed her trans siblings. They will remember the woman who danced. They will remember the woman who mothered her children. They will remember the woman who cherished her partners with such passion. They will remember the woman who loved herself so much she risked everything to become who she yearned to be. They will wonder what it would be like to be like me.

My enemies do well to fear the flame of my truth, for their true enemies lie within, waiting to kindle their own flames.

They will remember that I lived with joy.

And they will wish for more for themselves.

2/2 (please boost both if you boost)

“Walkable cities, suckable titties” belongs on a tee shirt in lesbian colors.

Remedial Ally School Tutoring, First Lesson

#ThingsYouCantUnsay #RemedialAllySchool

*I didn’t get an instruction manual.*

My co-parent suggested to me that my father might make substantially faster progress if I explained the lessons I hope he will learn from following my social media account, from interacting with people in my community, from my writing, from other writings I point him to.

*I got gaslit about who I am. By everyone, in every interaction.*

On an extremely basic level, the lesson is the totality. I’ll explore a single short post to explain it. Recently I replied to a post about baristas in a socialist utopia by saying I would look cute in an apron. This communicates my identity on myriad levels, and importantly, it would mean something slightly different from anyone else - the full content can be understood only in the context of who I am, conveyed by how I talk about myself, whom I speak with, and what I choose to say and not say.

*I learned to lie, constantly, smoothly, and convincingly about who I am.*

The barista comment connects to my socialism, and my concerns about the corrosive effect of my job on society. It expresses how my transition required it’s own golden handcuffs, pursuing career choices because of their stability, financial reward, their suitability in which to transition, the way they would not be negatively impacted by my stunted social and relational skills from existing in the closet. It nods to my femininity, my appreciation of fashion, my personal style. It calls back to public conversations with friends about how we would appreciate simpler work in a world that valued connection and working together and eschewed capitalism and billionaires. By directing it to another trans femme I know from my time on my social media account, it gestures to the web of connections I’m growing and living happily within. It conveyed such a rich set of messages about me in a handful of words.

*I existed in that darkness for 37 years. Living is vibrant and joyous - the closet was a death of self abnegation.*

1/3

I adore who I’m becoming. I’m outgoing and flirtatious, I help people feel seen, my body feels fantastic to live in. I want this for everyone. I want everyone to be as fully themselves as they can be. The dark things I talk about are an important part of this. I, and people like me, have to pass through some soul-rendingly dark places to be ourselves. That horror gives context to the joy. I write about the dark parts because the dark was portrayed as too much. Even being aware that it was there was considered eldritch knowledge that might damage me, might unsettle others.

*I found my own way out of the dark, and I learned how to be a person, and I learned how to be in community.*

I know people who don’t say these things where their parents can read, some who wait until their parents die before they let themselves know their own truths. I would normally let that stand on its own, as its meaning is clear in the context of <gestures to everything else I’ve written>, but I’ll elaborate here. I’m privileged that I both have the means, sort of, to risk my parents’ opinions, and that it might be the case that being open with them will produce change and growth in them. More likely my father than my mother, but even so. But beyond that, I’ve chosen a course of living out loud, and while that’s clearly atrophying many connections, the new ones that sprout and the old ones it nurtures more than make up for the losses, for me. I used to think this was me being harsh, but it’s me being gentle and nurturing with myself. Not everyone I know will benefit from me being myself, but I benefit both by valuing myself and by connecting in positive ways with those who are compatible with who I am.

*It was unrelentingly hard, especially the unlearning, and doing it the hard way taught me about how important community is.*

2/3

PSA to young twenty-something trans girls: I’m a smoking hot 40 year old woman who started transitioning two and a half years ago. You’re gonna be fine, take the hormones.

Trans Femme: The government is trying to kill me.

The Cis: But are they really, thooooo…

Trans Femme: I’m trying to kill the government.

The Cis: TREASON!

“Friends with benefits” is monogamous appropriation of polyamorous culture send toot.

PSA to cis folks: We know you fuck up other cis people’s pronouns all the time. There are a massive amount of you, accidental misgendering happens, it’s just a numbers game. When it does, you correct yourselves and move on.

We know you can do this successfully.

So when you fuck it up for #trans people, we notice. We’re not mad because you fucked up our pronouns.

We’re mad because we know you know how to fix it and make it not a big deal and get pronouns correct in the future, and you do it for each other, but not for us.

PSA: Do not misgender people with me.

Especially, do not misgender #trans people who are pick-mes and transmedicalists and fucking fash sell-outs. I’m not asking you to like them. I’m not asking you to hug them, or break bread with them, or take their nonsense seriously, or share your hormones with them. I’m just asking you to do them the basic courtesy of getting their names and pronouns right.

I get it. It REALLY hurts that they ought to know better. It hurts me, too.

But I’m not here for your “Only the pure.” None of us without all of us.

If your heart doesn’t have space for trans people who fight against our liberation, I worry it doesn’t have space for people who make mistakes, who disagree with you about tactics, who present differently than you think they should, who cannot or choose not to transition, whose personal relationship with the gender binary is different from yours, who aren’t “your” kind of trans person.

If your heart doesn’t have space for them, then your heart doesn’t have space for me.

PSA testosterone doesn’t make people angry and mean, patriarchy does, then blames a chemical to pretend it’s natural.

@hellomiakoda Taking your request to have this explained like you are 5 with an assumption that you are not actually a minor, here’s my understanding of the answer to your question about why people oppress trans people while simultaneously looking at porn of us:

Patriarchy, the idea that cis men are better than all other genders and should have all the power and money, oppresses everyone it touches. Cis men are taught to not see the inequalities, or they will be punished by others with a patriarchal worldview. But they are also taught to exert power over everyone else.

And thus they express that power through misogyny (unifying your points about how weird it is that chasers, the term for people who fetishize and objectify trans femmes, and straight men all hate the types of people they pursue sexually) and consent violations, including sexual harassment and assault.

Further, trans femmes represent a fundamental challenge to patriarchy’s gender-based value system, where men are best and that “best-ness” must be maintained. Trans femmes walk away from all that, and the patriarchy considers the rejection of its highest honor (“being a man”) to be a deep betrayal. So trans femmes get particularly vilified.

And since patriarchy prescribes misogyny and consent violations for those it disdains… it prescribes extra special large amounts of that for trans femmes.

And that’s (some of, in my understanding) why people both hate and fetishize trans femmes.

I don’t want to have to be happy.

I don’t want my transition to only be considered acceptable if I’m “happy now.”

I’m sad sometimes. Often, even. The polity I live in is drifting towards making my healthcare inaccessible, I’ve got a variety of battles to fight with my health insurance company, my cat’s health is fading a little bit at a time, and a whole bunch of other shit.

I just want to be a girl who is overwhelmed and sad. It’s not a big ask.

It feels like a big ask.

You know, I feel like growing as a person means I don’t always make the inappropriate joke about binge drinking and toxic sex anymore.

I don’t miss making the joke, but I do wish I didn’t still have the impulse.

This isn’t new, but I want to share it around again because it was so important for me and my radical embrace of #transition as a right that needs no justification:

https://medium.com/@mayrpeterson/i-did-not-consent-to-my-body-7e36c6b53ee1

#trans