Notices by Oddtail (oddtail@meow.social)

@ljwrites

I really recommend this game. It might be the best video game ever made, in my book.

I recommended it to my mother, which is the only time I ever did something like that. My mom does NOT play video games xD

I patiently waited for the Polish language version (and it took a long time), just to be sure I could give her a copy that she could play comfortably.

It's that good a game.

@clacke

And it's just so untrue, too.

There ARE compassionate, good people who will love their close ones until they are ready to love themselves.

You know how 95% of trans people think transition is absolutely viable for everyone else, but not for oneself? You know the "I'm too old/too masculine/too feminine/too bald/too tall/too short/too muscular/too petite" merry-go-round that your brain puts you through?

It's always more viable than you think. It's not even whether you can pass well or not. Transitioning is better than not transitioning even when there's very little initial progress. It just feels better. It makes you stronger. And changes will follow anyway.

I thought I was the one exception, too. Well, guess what.

1/?

I find that cis feminists tend not to realise that the idea that "masculinity and femininity are made up, social concepts" is thinking that is only a luxury a cis person can afford.

Yes, cis women get a lot of crap for not behaving "feminine". But a cis woman can often behave in masculine ways and be read as, well, a masculine woman. Which is great. Women should get to be masculine and men should get to be feminine. Awesome!

2/?

But if I reject femininity as a concept and just act as "me", I will not be read as masculine. I will be read as behaving as a man. Far, FAR more than any cis woman may be.

And I'm sure that's not exclusively a trans problem. Cis lesbians also have a history of being read as "not actually/fully women". But a trans woman has a special relationship with masculinity.

And I want to be masculine in a "woman" way. I do.

3/4

But I also don't think cis women get the particular set of circumstances that a pre-transition trans woman is. Yes, in an ideal world I wouldn't even look at what is masculine and what is feminine. I'd be me, whatever that means.

But nobody is just "themselves". My social reality is a product of how people see me. If I project masculinity, I WILL be seen as behaving as a man due to purely visual and physical cues.

4/4

And it has nothing to do with (overt) transphobia. Not directly.

If you're cis and you disagree, great! It's nice that you get this not having be AS much of a consideration. I love your reality, but I can't move to that reality with the way I look, with the way my face looks, with how I'm perceived both by strangers and people who know me.

My (signalled) femininity is not a spherical cow in a vacuum, is what I'm trying to say.

People are (occasionally) aware of things like survivorship bias etc., but I think it's not said enough - when talking about how to do things, we should talk not just to people who wildly succeed, but also to people who fail, or who've failed a lot.

It's not *just* to correct for survivorship bias, either. It establishes more realistic expectations, for one. People who needed to correct for errors are more aware of those errors, for another. Sb who does a thing easily may not know *why*.

So, DeviantArt opted in, by default, all existing art on the website for use by third-party AI.

Without notifying their users. For all existing art.

You have to go through your art pieces one by one and tick a box that you do NOT consent to this.

I learnt about it on Birdsite, by accident.

And of course, any inactive user or dead user will have their art used by AI models from now on, even though they never agreed to this.

Disgusting.