i actually hate when people interject with “the patriarchy hurts men too!” in every discussion about womens systemic oppression. like yeah, it does. but you don’t need to bring it up every single time we discuss misogyny as a reason people should *really* care about dismantling the patriarchy. like womens suffering isn’t enough of an issue, it has to affect men before it’s actually taken seriously. im just sick of having to cater to mens victim complex and validate their feelings of oppression before any real work can be done. isn’t it enough that we’re suffering? cuz it doesn’t feel like it is

Little extra drawings I did for a couple of my customers who purchased some of my trans-themed prints and drawings 😺🏳️‍⚧️

Top dysphoria?

Nah, fam. You mean....

Anxie-titties

I’ve always wondered why stone butches are exclusively a lesbian thing (as far as I know). Like, you never hear about gay men where one doesn’t want to be touched sexually, so it’s not a gay thing. You don’t hear of straight couples where that’s a thing either, so it’s not a woman thing.

The only reasons I can think of are that women have more sexual baggage and feel more vulnerable (and are less horny than men generally), so it’s unlikely a man would want this. And then on top of that a man in a straight relationship is unlikely to tolerate his girlfriend not wanting her genitals to be touched ever, so a straight woman who felt like this would probably just be single. But then again, I’m sure there are men who would be happy to be sucked off by women during casual sex with no reciprocation - and I’ve never heard of that either!

But are there other reasons do you think? Is it butch women having hang ups about their female genitals being touched, or about feeling vulnerable to a partner because they are masculine as a woman?

I find this so interesting to think about.

While I can see where this line of thinking comes, from I would like to challenge it for a couple of reasons.

The first being that stone lesbians have a long historical association with the term. For many of us, our stone-ness stems from trauma and that cannot be separated from it. The identities, what they connote, and the safety they bring to the lesbian community can never be devalued or disassociated. And I am specifically talking stone. Both top and bottom, butch and femme. This isn't a hang up about "female genitals". I have classically "male" genitals and still identify as a stone butch. Stone comes from a collective understanding of our needs, and how factors in our life made us not okay with certain things being done to us, and saying "yeah, those needs are okay actually. That's desirable. I'm not broken." So firstly anon, I'd like you to ask yourself where your perceptions of stone stem from.

Secondly though, while I can see where you're coming from, I really want to challenge the notion of men not wanting these things. Of men always wanted to be touched, wanting sexual attention. This speaks to a deep issue of stigmatization/generalization of male sexuality. As horn dogs. As sexually hungry machines. I challenge the idea that there aren't men who don't want acts associated with stone tops/bottoms because I know men personally who do. I know men who are sex repulsed. I know men who only ever want to eat their cishet girlfriend out, top her, and focus on her, never once asking for reciprocation. I know men who have that classic "infinite libido" of male hood but are the biggest power bottoms on the planet and would rather eat glass before topping someone because it makes them feel dysphoric. Makes them feel wrong.

As for "women are less horny than men", have you seen lesbian tumblr? Have you seen booktok? Some of us are SHAMELESS. Feminine libido has nigh on infinite potential for some and it is a beautiful thing that should never ever be swept under the rug with a generalization like that. Men are expected to have limitless libido and this too must be challenged. Growing up male, before coming out as trans, it was an extreme source of shame that my sexuality didn't align with the other boys. That I didn't experience sexuality the same. I got bullied incessantly for not being a sexual deviant, and I wasn't the only one. This idea of the ever-hungry masculine directly attributes to toxic masculinity and ideas perpetuated by patriarchal relationship standards.

Part of how I think collectively we can evolve and heal our understanding of sexuality and healthy sexual practices is understanding your needs intimately, regardless of gender or sexuality. Learning how to effectively communicate those needs, and subsequently accepting when others have their own needs (including when they don't align with yours, not everyone is compatible and that's okay). Just like how a classic stone4stone relationship seems to be what will be my ultimate ideal match-up, everyone's needs deserve to be met and honored by a partner with needs that align with theirs.

Stone top/bottom, stone butch/femme are incredibly unique and important identities within the lesbian community. Claiming stone for myself has helped heal years and years of shame and trauma around my sexuality that I never thought possible to heal. Those terms I can argue stay in the lesbian community for the various historical and cultural implications. But I also really do need to stress how much we should accept the experiences associated with stone being applicable to everyone, even if the terminology may not be.

Hard.

Coelingh Bennink, H. J. T., Schultz, I. J., Schmidt, M., Jordan, V. C., Briggs, P., Egberts, J. F. M., Gemzell-Danielsson, K., Kiesel, L., Kluivers, K., Krijgh, J., Simoncini, T., Stanczyk, F. Z., & Langer, R. D. (2023). "Progesterone from ovulatory menstrual cycles is an important cause of breast cancer." Breast cancer research : BCR, 25(1), 60. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13058-023-01661-0

According to this overview, the hormone that causes breast cancer is progesterone from menstrual cycles, not estrogen or testosterone. The risk of developing breast cancer is about the same whether someone has normal menstrual periods or takes birth control to suppress their periods. The risk may be slightly higher in the latter case. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) doesn't cause a higher risk. Transgender women who take estrogen develop breasts that are the same as those of cisgender women, but with a much lower risk of breast cancer than cisgender women, and higher than that of cisgender men. Transgender men do not increase their risk of breast cancer by taking testosterone, and top surgery reduces their risk.

Locker room realness 💪🏻

Woofy!

18 DAYS UNTIL TOP SURGERY YALL IM SO HYPE

okay "normie median Biden voter ice" got me. That's funny. But also so true! It prob took him a bit to vote dem too (though I believe that Ice would have never voted for Trump). Would love to hear more thoughts on Ice and Mav's politics. Also the list of who they would have voted for if you're willing to share.

i do worry that posting my extremely in-depth headcanons about some of this stuff will have the JKR “wizard shit” effect on my writing and ruin it a little, but ask and ye shall receive

copy-pasted straight from my list of “unhinged compacflt!top gun headcanons” that ive been keeping since september: on ice & mav's politics

16. Since their friendship began, Ice has always told Maverick who to vote for, since Maverick doesn't care enough to pay attention to national politics. They are begrudging ConservaDems (conservative political views, would vote conservative every election if Republicans weren’t actively sending them to war/actively promoting fascism). Ice’s voting record (and after 1988, Mav’s too) 1980-2020—note that he has always considered himself an “educated moderate”: 1980: Reagan. 1984: Reagan. 1988: Bush. 1992: Bush. 1996: Clinton (reaction to aftermath of PGW. Doesn’t care that Clinton enacted DADT because “I’m not [redacted], so it doesn’t apply to me”). 2000: Gore (refusal to vote for another Bush). 2004: Kerry (Mav votes Bush this year out of spite as he and Ice are going through their break-up). 2008: McCain (Navy loyalty). 2012: Obama (liked him as a person/worked closely with him, didn’t like his policies so much). 2016: Clinton (no other alternative). 2020: Biden (actually liked/previously worked with Biden, and now actively married to another man and therefore had to make some liberal concessions). 2024-onwards they will vote for any Democrat as long as they aren’t a “socialist.”

17. Also, Maverick didn’t vote in 2016. Partially because in my universe the TGM mission takes place that November, very near the election, and he has bigger fish to fry (something Ice will later take him to task for), and partially because I genuinely think he wouldn’t be able to stomach either mainstream candidate and probably would’ve voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, which might have torn his relationship with Ice to shreds a few days before schedule. “Are you fucking kidding me? Johnson? Pete, this moron’s moronic party wants to abolish the driver’s license—” / “—Yeah, and then I could ride your sweet wheels with no problem whatsoever—maybe he’ll abolish pilots’ licenses, too, I’d like to see that—” / “If you vote for Gary fucking Johnson, I will very happily stop footing the bill for your piece-of-shit airplane, and you can see how useful your pilot’s license is then—” / So Mav didn’t vote in 2016. 

35. In terms of what he Tweets: I do foresee, post-retirement, Ice basically becoming a neoliberal military intellectual type on Twitter a la Mark Hertling (look him up on Twitter). Bio: “Retired @SECNAV. Advisor @WhiteHouse and @VoteVets. Contributing writer @TheAtlantic. Interested in geopolitics & modern warfare. Aviator, husband, Padres fan. [American flag emoji]” Only posts pictures of himself and Maverick at three specific annual events: 1. their wedding anniversary (“36 years with this fool and he’s still surprised to find out that I like the F-5 better than the A-4 #happyanniversary”), 2. every EAA Airventure (huge airplane convention), 3. San Francisco’s Fleet Week (which of course they MUST attend, they even headline it in 2018). Informative, analytical, highly-respected. Maybe goes on CNN or NBC all the time to talk about civil-military relations shit (aversion to FOX since the start of the Iraq War). Gonna say he had like four really viral threads about Russia and Ukraine in April or May and so has 300k followers or something like that. He has a personal website that links back to his Twitter and every essay he writes for international publications, with a pretty braggadocious bio (something along the lines of “Tom Kazansky has directly almost started global nuclear war twice in his life, and in the thirty-year gap in between, sold the Swiss half their entire goddamn Air Force and directed an entire Fleet during the Iraq War”). Lots of tweets like “Military aviation hot take: Compared to the F-22, the F-35 is a waste of money. Source: husband with 400+ hours of F-35 experience.” / “[Quote tweet of Russian Foreign Minister boasting about Su-57 production lines] Oh, so you guys finally figured out how to make more than one every other year?” / “Analysis of the failure of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, from an ex-US Pacific Fleet Commander’s perspective: a short [thread emoji] [This thread gets 26k likes and 4k retweets]” / “This weekend my husband & I flew in to @EAA Oshkosh #OSH19 & took home first place for best P-51. Not to brag, but.” (A reply to this tweet: “Sir, you really know how to bury the lede that your husband is Adm. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. I had to look it up on Wikipedia.” / @TKazansky: “What, was it not obvious? Who else could it have been?”) Also, I see him writing a whole bunch of op-eds for international political magazines a la Tom Nichols (look him up on Twitter too). Writing analyses of recent geopolitical/military events for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Bulwark, the Navy Times, the Atlantic, Bellingcat, etc. Not so much focused on domestic issues (but VoteVets [socially progressive vets’ group] board member, and ardently pro-democracy, yay!). He’s a smart guy.

37. This is not a headcanon, just kind of a… a real-life implication. My Ice was Deputy Commander of Third Fleet in 2003, meaning he’d have been there in command of the USS Abraham Lincoln when President Bush gave his “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard that ship in May less than 2 months after the initial American invasion of Iraq. Very premature & embarrassing. Ice would’ve been in direct contact with Bush/Cheney/NSC bureaucrats many, many times during the war. I genuinely believe this is what pushed him over the edge into firm liberal territory.