Notices by Jasmine running (jasmine@chaosfem.tw)

i'm so proud of you ♥️

"biological sex" makes it sound like cis people don't have sensuality or eroticism but only like… test tube breeding

i'd prefer romantic sex over biological sex please

What wouldn't surprise me would on the other hand be if this is reflected in the statistics of who gets injured in traffic.

I've been waiting for this and just now it happened—someone on a bicycle collided with me! Luckily nobody got hurt even in the slightest.

Why have I expected this? Well, when I changed my everyday presentation to "femme" (trying to be she/her-ed by default) in July 2023, people started giving me less and less personal space out on the biking and walking paths. Mopedists, bicyclists, runners, walkers—even roller skiers—they all started passing me closer and closer.

I always walk very autistically on the left side, close to the edge of the path, so people passing me have lots of space at their disposal. I also noticed a pattern where they'd give me even less space if they were passing me from behind. So I'm pretty sure that this is about being read as a woman.

The personal space I get has kept decreasing. The last few months I've even had to take a step to the left to not get hit by the handlebar for a handful of male bicyclists trying to go around me from in front of me where I can see their approach.

And today the diminishing trend finally reached zero, as a male bicyclist coming from behind me hit me with his handlebar.

I've known about and researched and worked against so many misogynistic patterns in social spaces, ever since I started doing practical feminism as part of my daily activism and work in politics. But this thing about being granted less and less space on walking paths because of transitioning, until people eventually start colliding into me—that one still came as a surprise.

give a man a fish and he'll ask how you got it; teach a man to fish and he'll mansplain fishing to you the whole time

exploring my witch identity with 5yo after he told a preschool teacher two days ago that I'm a GOOD witch. he inserted that adjective himself.

i'm the kind of witch that helps people by solving their unsolvable problems. that's my witchcraft. i can talk to trees and ask for knowledge. i'm a witch of knowing many things. i can make boys and girls into girls or boys or something else and back again. and i was told i needed to be a boy when i was a little girl and eventually i did it because everyone was nagging me. but then i was never happy again until now—and do you know why?

"because you had a child, and that was me"

(oh gosh how do i get myself out of this one)

you make me so happy! i should have been happy! and that's when i realised something was wrong. i was angry and sad even after you became my child. and it would have been so hard for you if i had been angry and sad all the time, so i changed it back—and now I'm happy with you just like i should be

to my 5yo, I'm an unusual parent. there are no other kids with parents like mine. i think there was a lesbian couple of mothers to a kid but I'm not sure if they're still living here.

it's been on his mind for nearly two years now, but i haven't been able to find a way for him to understand it. the concepts needed just aren't there in his social environment. the preschool teachers can't stop calling me "dad" when talking to him, or to me or each other or at all. they're too closed to think outside of the cis straight family configuration and i think they'll die of old age before that can change.

so he's latching on to this witch framing and wants to know more, because it explains all the unusual things. and in some very significant ways it's also true. the stories i know about good witches often do align with me. as does the scepticism and suspicions aimed at witches. for now, it's a language we can use to finally talk about these things without him getting too stressed out by the competing narratives he's presented with about gender

this is not the first time i'm telling this story. when i was 8 and my mom turned 30, her present from my dad was "the witch's handbook". he thought it was funny and the next year she divorced him.

but the book itself was not a joke. it was written by a danish witch. i was allowed to borrow it and went down the rabbit hole, being the confused and lost trans child that i was in this age of complete epistemic oppression. i knew i was something else—maybe this was it?

one page of the book addressed gender. "can men be witches? no," it said, "all witches are women" … "but it does happen that witches are born into men's bodies. they're still women though!"

so obviously i was a witch! from that moment i knew. i was a girl on the inside, and this was the only explanation i ever got growing up. this odd little trans-inclusive parenthesis in a book written by a danish witch in the 80's was everything society taught me about being trans.

if some kids end up thinking that i might be a good witch who can "change people's gender", then at least they have a living story about how that's a thing. i don't care if cis kids believe in it. i care that trans kids aren't convinced that it's impossible. this particular magic does exist.

while i was picking out a can of monster in the grocery store a random cis woman just stood there for a while and then out of nowhere and quietly said something to me. i didn't catch it and turned around and smiled and said "va?" (pardon?) and she tilted her head and shyly said "you are very beautiful"

and… me being me, i gave my usual half-embarrassed little girl smile (fits me a lot better these days hahaha), said "thanks" and turned back to what i was doing (because i am INTENSE and you can't derail me very easily… or at all really) and… hey actually what just happened??? 😵💫

the question will now be forever on my mind until i forget about this in two or three days: did she clock me as trans or did a cis lesbian or bi woman think i was one too and proceeded to flirt with me in the tucking energy drinks aisle!? lmao

to-do: dip transphobe in super glue and googly eyes

my favourite thing to say instead of "ladies and gentlemen" might just be "enbies et cetera"

apparently fosstodon has some kind of a "no politics" policy in place? that's a very big warning sign!

to see why, i suggest watching "How to Radicalize a Normie" from The Alt-Right Playbook.

if you're super pressed for time, begin watching at 8:35 and stay until 12:30.

that part of the video explains very clearly how having a "contained" fascist on the mod team is still part of an effective recruitment strategy, and why the way mike (the instance owner) is acting now is a sign that the strategy is working.

but i REALLY think you should watch the whole video, because it explains not just what communities with "no politics"-style policies does for the alt-right (the "no controversy" kind that gets you a warning for saying trans lives matters), but also the rest of the alt-right radicalisation pipeline that those communities are part of.

ok, since I'm seemingly not really doing anything useful today, I'll use my own words to state something from that video. (so i'm not the smart person behind this; that's ian danskin/innuendo studios, self-identified cis guy)

when there's a "no politics" policy, what does that really mean?

well, "politics" actually means controversy here. "don't talk politics" really means "don't cause political conflict". ian points out how "nazis are bad" is an uncontroversial opinion and therefore also non-political. but therefore, "nazis are good" is also non-political, since nobody will defend it! it's obviously a joke. it doesn't cause conflict within the group because everyone disagrees.

"trans lives matter" DOES on the other hand cause controversy within the group, so it is considered political and yields a warning. (yes, on fosstodon)

what this means is that being a nazi is considered non-political and allowed, while being trans is on the other hand considered political, so you better not talk about it—and if you do, then you are ruining the community with your political agenda.

now, it's worth pointing out that fosstodon doesn't actually have a literal "no politics" rule. instead, it has a "don't cause political conflicts" rule—and that's the exact thing that "no politics" usually means. look, they made it super obvious that the above is what is going on:

3) Do not be intentionally antagonistic. A post or reply designed to provoke a confrontation is not acceptable.

and that's part of the alt-right playbook.

you're not a failure, sweetie—you're just queer

Being born was just a massive invasion of my privacy.

i think that usually, blocking and then posting about it means that the block was intended as a form of public moral judgement. i do those too sometimes when reply-guy randoms show up from nowhere and dump huge loads of anger in my mentions. it's a decent way of processing it (and i usually do need to process it), at least for as long as it's "punching upwards"

the "not naming names" public shaming thing is something I've talked about before, like when admins quote incoming reports and argue about them publicly. it's a thing i saw a lot of in politics too, a kind of master suppression technique building on oneself having more informal and often also formal power than the other, meant to intimidate others from disagreeing with you. "look what happens if you talk back to me"

but anyway, i hardly ever post about blocking someone when it's for my own mental health, which is like… nearly all of my blocks so far. why would i draw attention to wanting to avoid all contact with someone? that could cause drama and draw their attention, which is what i'm trying to avoid, right?

some people still notice and get upset by being quietly blocked and start subtooting about it, in much the same manner as those who are blocking others as a power play

and here's something that will probably seem alien to a lot of people: it's always such a relief when that subtooting begins!

it's one of my most problematic flaws that i'm so intensely afraid of accidentally making someone feel rejected for no good reason, and that includes them feeling rejected by them blocking me. no i'm not kidding. this is what i was shaped into. it's the core trait that "made me" into a repeat relationship abuse victim, for example. i "make" people with invasive tendencies become uniquely abusive, by not setting the boundaries they need. so this is not about me being "too nice" at all. and i'm likely never going to fully get rid of this dependent personality style no matter what i do. i just have to learn how to deal with it

so i'm happy to have come this far now that when the subtooting begins, it dispels all those toxic feelings of me somehow causing needless harm: this really wasn't someone i should have been in contact with in the first place. to phrase it in the least ableist way i can think of: we're ultimately incompatible

i need to put way more trust in my "kelpian" sixth sense

@clacke please prefer directing any replies/reactions to the original post rather than mine :akko_smile2: