before i watched barbie i saw people say stuff like if i was someone who didn't know anything about feminism gloria's monologue would've been great but alas i do know things about feminism so i was unimpressed and i thought the same thing because. i do know about feminism but seeing gifs of it recently because a good quality file has hit the internet and gifmakers reminded me of america ferrera saying that meryl streep had said she would've loved to deliver that monologue and i'm like. i hope one of you is lying. you can't be serious.

By: Chloe Cole

Published: July 28, 2023

On Thursday, her 19th birthday, Chloe Cole testified to Congress with a “final warning” that medical treatments to change the gender of confused children is horrific. Cole, who was given surgery as a teenager to become male and soon regretted it, said what she needed most was therapy, not a scalpel. Here is what she told lawmakers:

My name is Chloe Cole and I am a de-transitioner.

Another way to put that would be: I used to believe that I was born in the wrong body and the adults in my life, whom I trusted, affirmed my belief, and this caused me lifelong, irreversible harm. 

I speak to you today as a victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America. 

I speak to you in the hope that you will have the courage to bring the scandal to an end, and ensure that other vulnerable teenagers, children and young adults don’t go through what I went through. 

Deceit & coercion 

At the age of 12, I began to experience what my medical team would later diagnose as gender dysphoria.

I was well into an early puberty, and I was very uncomfortable with the changes that were happening to my body. I was intimidated by male attention. 

And when I told my parents that I felt like a boy, in retrospect, all I meant was that I hated puberty, that I wanted this newfound sexual tension to go away.

I looked up to my brothers a little bit more than I did to my sisters. 

I came out as transgender in a letter I sent on the dining room table.

My parents were immediately concerned.

They felt like they needed to get outside help from medical professionals. 

But this proved to be a mistake.

It immediately set our entire family down a path of ideologically motivated deceit and coercion.

The general specialist I was taken to see told my parents that I needed to be put on puberty-blocking drugs right away. 

They asked my parents a simple question: Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living transgender son? 

The choice was enough for my parents to let their guard down, and in retrospect, I can’t blame them.

This is the moment that we all became victims of so-called gender-affirming care.

I was fast-tracked onto puberty blockers and then testosterone. 

The resulting menopausal-like hot flashes made focusing on school impossible.

I still get joint pains and weird pops in my back.

But they were far worse when I was on the blockers. 

Forever changed 

A month later, when I was 13, I had my first testosterone injection.

It has caused permanent changes in my body: My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer, my bone structure permanently masculinized, my Adam’s apple more prominent, my fertility unknown. 

I look in the mirror sometimes, and I feel like a monster.

I had a double mastectomy at 15.

They tested my amputated breasts for cancer.

That was cancer-free, of course; I was perfectly healthy.

There is nothing wrong with my still-developing body, or my breasts other than that, as an insecure teenage girl, I felt awkward about it.

After my breasts were taken away from me, the tissue was incinerated — before I was able to legally drive. 

I had a huge part of my future womanhood taken from me.

I will never be able to breastfeed.

I struggle to look at myself in the mirror at times.

I still struggle to this day with sexual dysfunction.

And I have massive scars across my chest and the skin grafts that they used, that they took of my nipples, are weeping fluid today, and they’re grafted into a more masculine positioning, they said. 

After surgery, my grades in school plummeted.

Everything that I went through did nothing to address the underlying mental health issues that I had.

And my doctors with their theories on gender that all my problems would go away as soon as I was surgically transformed into something that vaguely resembled a boy — their theories were wrong.

The drugs and surgeries changed my body, but they did not and could not change the basic reality that I am, and forever will be, a female. 

Depths of despair 

When my specialists first told my parents they could have a dead daughter or a live transgender son, I wasn’t suicidal.

I was a happy child who struggled because she was different. 

However at 16, after my surgery, I did become suicidal.

I’m doing better now, but my parents almost got the dead daughter promised to them by my doctors.

My doctor had almost created the very nightmare they said they were trying to avoid. 

So what message do I want to bring to American teenagers and their families?

I didn’t need to be lied to.

I needed compassion.

I needed to be loved. 

I needed to be given therapy that helped me work through my issues, not affirmed my delusion that by transforming into a boy, it would solve all my problems. 

We need to stop telling 12-year-olds that they were born wrong, that they are right to reject their own bodies and feel uncomfortable with their own skin. 

We need to stop telling children that puberty is an option, that they can choose what kind of puberty they will go through, just like they can choose what clothes to wear or what music to listen to. 

Pseudoscience 

Puberty is a rite of passage to adulthood, not a disease to be mitigated.

Today, I should be at home with my family celebrating my 19th birthday.

Instead, I’m making a desperate plea to my elected representatives.

Learn the lessons from other medical scandals, like the opioid crisis. 

Recognize that doctors are human, too, and sometimes they are wrong. 

My childhood was ruined along with thousands of de-transitioners that I know through our networks.

This needs to stop. You alone can stop it. 

Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience.

Please let me be your final warning. 

Thank you.

Might as well call her a murtad and kufr.

"The medical industry mutilated me, maybe don't mutilate other kids," shouldn't require bravery or renouncing an ideology.

Reminder: A minor under the age of 18 is too young to agree to a cellphone contract. 🤦‍♀️

Personally I hate when they refer to sex as an "adult" activity. Like you don't think minors get horny?? People are out here going through puberty at 8-12 years old man

Im gonna ramble for a bit about this so yeah sorry its just a great question and what age should people have sex is a very hot topic in ky life rn so ill ramble about it .Yeah actually the peak time to have sex is 14-15 , right when your beginning to become actually sentient and have actual feeling but youre still young enought to be short of lost and for it to be explorative and for ypu to not totally know what ypure doing . The way i see it peoples teenage years are their free trial of adulthood , so they should try all things that are typical for adulthood, yk like getting more responsibility , being more independent, falling in love , having sex , really agressively hating people , having rivalries , making decisions, while still being free to do it wrong and fuck it up . Its the time when youre supposed to reaserce and figure out what you like and how you like it , so youll be ready to be a part of society and short of know what type of person you want to be . Its like the fucking demo or the tutorial before the real game . Youre not supposed to go into adulhood fully realised without putting the work in to find yourself . Well teenagehood is when you find yourself . Some fucking philosopher wrote about this but i forgot . He said that the youth are like bees , collecting nectar from all the flowers so that latter when its time to get the nectar back to their hive theyll know which is sweetest or something like that .

That being said , when youre still young youre very very very stupid , so when young people try to have sex it goes BADLY especially when their having sex with someone older . People are so shitty and so fucking mean and cruel and when your still a kid and dont have the coping mechanisms to deal with it you tend to get fucked up mentally . I cannot begin to describe just how many horror storries ive heard of girls saying that their boyfriend did awful and cruel things to them and because it was their first relationship or because the were to young to know its not normal they went with it . Girls being to young and insecure LIKE ALL TEENS ARE and letting people use them simply because their either too shy and unsure and frightened to say no , not old enough to have learned about feminsm and about supporting their rights and sticking up for themselves, or just so desperate to have their body validated because again , they are unstable teenagers that hatethemselves like all teenagers do . On the other hand , ive heard of so many girls and guys and people , myself included , being fucking detestable and downright hurtfull because all our fucking hormones arent stablied and we have moodswings all the time and all our emotions are dialed up too 10000 .

Anyway , teenagers and kid are gonna have sex because its biologically natural . In theory its a good idea but in practice it litterally never goes well . I PERSONALY think that in a perfect world people would have sex at 15 , but its not a perfect world and people are fucking terrible so again in my PERSONAL opinion its best to wait till your somewhat resposible for yourself . Did i wait till i was responsible for myself fuck no but i mean i probably should have

Thinkin bout how so many dykes who later become gaydens didnt know how easy they probably had it in the women department.  Probably all of them would have become successful lesbians if, early enough, they realized how men and women actually work.

I mean who can blame them?  Teenage boys dont know whats up during puberty either.  They learn by making mistakes, fueled by insane levels of test.  Girls dont have that.  Guys also know theyre supposed to like girls and date them.  And that women see them as guys.  Girls dont have that mental programming either.

(At least we can later commiserate on how girls gave us attention and we were completely blind to the kind of attention they were giving us.)

(YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO BE THAT DYKEY TO GET FEMALE ATTENTION ITS SO FUCKING EASY LIKE ok tangent time

Most of middle school and high school i looked like a stereotypical nerd girl.  I was super nice, and everyone knew me as quiet nice girl.  And yet,

- when i approached girls for friendship they glared at me with suspicion - when i ignored women and did my own thing they acted friendly toward me and asked me to hang out with them

I didnt even do anything.  Didnt care about the dumb bullshit they talked about.  DIdnt talk about boys with them and paint nails and take part in their reading club.  But i was invited to all the slumber parties, and people cared about everything i had to say (which was very little).  Which made me very suspicious but i enjoyed the attention.

God if i had just realized that once a girl hits puberty she doesnt magically treat females differently from males because of sex.  They care about energy.  Ive heard so many lesbians talk about how they were shooed away from girls when it was time to change clothes, as if they were seen as male.  But they werent.  I never saw myself as a girl or a boy, but i assumed people in 6th+ grade saw me as a girl.  But it didnt mean people, particularly women, were treating me like one.  Gosh no wonder “gender is a social construct” is such a fem thing.  And when i learned about gay stuff, i thought, “girls dating girls? That’s cool, in theory.  Not like i have the opportunity.”  like wHAT  

This continued through college, too, although it stopped being being invited to girl groups and lunch tables (i did hang out at lunch with people but it was people in my extracurrics and mostly boys) and instead being women walking right up to me and talking to me like i had always been their gal pal.  This is probably where my experiences diverge from most men (maybe not gay men) because women are so much more comfy around other women (and gay men) than men.  It was in college i got my first “i love you” from a non-blood-relation girl.  The first time a girl said to me “its not that i havent thought about it...” 

And still it didnt register.  Even after i heard of trans stuff and started playing with gender presentation and identity.  Because i wasnt pretending to be a man or looked like one, then nothing could be happening between me and women (unless they were a Lesbian) because i wasnt a Lesbian.

I wonder.... if i had, back in middle school, had the guts to hang with the guys on the guy side and really be myself, if i would have figured it out back then (or someone else for me).  The most progress i made on my sex social skills & awareness was when hanging out on 4chan.  The closes thing to a boys locker room, and being treated as a boy by boys, i could get.

“No opportunities” I had... let me count... ok i cant remember all the girls in my squad but it had to be at least ten.  Realistically probably only 2 or 3 actual opportunities but i coulda got in so much practice.  More maybe if i lifted weights like i originally wanted to (thanks mom).  You dont even have to bang or makeout with your gf in that age range, so fuckin easy jfc i was such a dumb pussy

Im rollin in pussy now tho 😎

I gonna break in this acocunt with me being angry about something that doesn't really matter (very fitting for tumblr if you ask me), this article.

First: "And I’m sorry to open with this, but part of that is due to the age difference between them. Two years is hardly worlds apart (I’m personally working with four), but a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl are. Especially the way these two are drawn. Not to be too voyeuristic about Y7 cartoons, but Katara has clearly gone through puberty, while Aang hasn’t. There is something just…off, about a sixth grade boy having a full on make-out sesh with a high school girl."

This argument is one of the most stupid ones if you ask me, because it blatantly ignores the culture we have been presented by the show. I can understand why people find this weird, but we have to try not to look at it as if its our society, because its not. In A:tla, specifically the water tribes, 16 is marrying age. Right there, our "age norms" (idk what else to call it) are very different. And there are no divisions between ages in their world like we have with middle and high school. To me, two people are fit to be together based on their maturity, not their age. That's why 45 & 40 is not the same as 15 & 10, or 20 & 15. This is the same for Kataang. They have very similar life experiences and matured together, literally side by side, so a two year ago gap is irrelevant.

Second: "...Katara took on a very maternal role with Aang. Sure, she’s a caretaker and sort of a “mom friend,” but it’s a bit more than that. She served as his literal guardian during the show’s run—there’s just no other way to look at it. By the third episode, she called herself his “family,” and later even went on to role play as his mother to get him out of trouble at school. Aang, meanwhile, was… Well, I wouldn’t say “immature” for his age, […] However, Katara is 14 going on 25, while Aang is just, Aang."

There's a compilation of Katara doing thing with Aang that if someone saw a mother doing with her son they would call it incest:

Katara definitely acts motherly towards Aang, but that is just her nature. She is more than just motherly with him. And some people like to call the check kisses familial (which is kinda weird imo), but we know Katara herself doesnt think that:

"Easy there, big brother" She pushes Sokka away. Not to mention, this was about a scene or two before she kisses Aang on the check.

Calling someone close to you your family does not mean you see them in the same way you see your parents/siblings. And Sokka played Aang's father in that scene, but we aren't sitting here using that as evidence to call him Aang's paternal figure.

Something Aang haters forget (or chose to ignore) is that being lighthearted and goofy does not equal immature. Yes, Aang does some juvenile things, but that shouldn't take away from his growth and maturity.

Third: "In fact, in the last season, Katara was shown to be uncomfortable each time Aang kisses her, and even went as far as to tell him to back off with the romantic stuff in the episode before the finale, because she was confused about how she felt. [*new paragraph*] Yet, in the end, she just trots up and blushes at Aang, than happily makes out with him when he goes for it,"

Katara initiated 2/4 of the kataang kisses (not including the check kisses). The kiss in The Cave of Two Lovers and the kiss in the finale. Yes, she's the one that "goes for it" in the finale (she also initiates the hug). She only pulls away once out of the 3 times we see a kiss end (this would be excluding the kiss in The Cave of Two Lovers). She wasn't confused about her feelings, she didn't want to have to worry about a relationship when they were nearing the end of the war.

Fourth: "The post-canon comics only furthered the lack of exploration of her feelings in this relationship"

Fifth: "[referencing a scene in The Promise in which Katara is jealous of a fanclub being around Aang] "I'm sorry, this amazing, adult communication is blowing me away"

The are both still teenagers, who have zero previous relationship experience. Also, Aang had no ill intentions and Katara recognized it.

Sixth: [refencing Katara's role in The Legend of Korra] "Did Katara want to do anything other than sit in a healing hut and be known for having Aang's kids?"

This is another argument that just pisses me off. You can not use Katara's lifestyle in her 80s (she is 85 in s1) as judgement for her adulthood. It's purely assumption based. Constantly this author assumes that because she is in a relationship with Aang, Katara would drop her whole personality. What? Katara would not and could not be forced to do something or conform to some label and Aang wouldn't let it get to that point either. He would squash any idea that she is just "The Avatar's wife" or "The mother of the Avatar's children" the minute he heard it.

Seven: [comparing Katara's reaction to Aang The Desert to Aang's reaction to Katara in The Southern Raiders] "You'll spend a long time looking for her condescending tones. "Anger won't help, Aang," Katara never said, because she got that he was processing something painful and needed to sort it out himself. This difference in behavior is something that would be really fitting for a twelve year old boy to learn and understand. There's just no indication that he ever did."

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I don't remember Aang being condescending towards Katara. He was offering his advice because he knew her and knew that she would regret doing what she thought was right when her judgement was clouded by anger. And guess what. He was right. He never forced anything on her, either. Sure, he was a bit more pushy than he could've been, but in the end he let her go on the trip with no complaints. He even agreed that this was something she had to do.

Eighth: [referencing The Ember Island Players] "When the actor says 'Wait! I thought you were the Avatar's girl', Aang agrees. Katara is his."

You know damn well Aang doesn't see Katara as just his. And she's give him PLENTY of reason to believe that his feelings are reciprocated (which they are).

Ninth: "It's the story of a woman who swallows everything lest the man she's interested in has to learn anything about his behavior that violates her boundaries."

Ha! You said she was interested in him.

But in all seriousness, you mentioned how Katara stood her ground and told Aang that she was confused, but apparently now she's swallowing her feeings.

Tenth: [talks about the cloud babies daddy issues]

I don't disagree with what is said here, for the most part, but I don't think it is a reflection on Aang and Katara's relationship.

Eleventh: "... given what what we got with Kataang, it's completely unsurprising that Aang and Katara's parenthood/adult life was defined by a lack of communication and availability, at least from what we can tell. This also puts Katara's choice to immediately moved to the South Pole once Aang died in perspective; perhaps the city he poured all his energy into, at the cost of his family, held some bitter memories."

Once again with the lack communication. We can't use the early years of their relationship to determine their whole relationship. Also, there wasn't consistently a lack of communication, you just pointed out one time and ran with it.

We don't know at what point Katara moved back to the South Pole, but there are plenty of reasons for Katara to leave Air Temple Island:

a) Her son moving in/or planning to move in with his family.

b) She was no longer needed in the city and thus had no need to stay.

c) She wanted to go back to her native home for comfort after the love of her life died at a relatively early age.

d) The next Avatar was discovered and she came home to train them.

That's all. Thank you for reading my unnecessary rant if you made it this far, and I just want to close out with a few things:

- There were some things in the article that I did not include for the fear of this becoming a novel of me repeating myself.

- I agree with most thing said in the final segment of the the article. Most, not all.

- I appreciate the author for not trying to shove Zutara in just because Kataang wasn't there. That is becoming increasingly uncommon, so it was nice to see.

Oh god, I need to talk about that Powerpuff Girls script

So, do I ever actually post here? No. Has a part of my childhood been re-opened, stepped on repeatedly and run over with a car? Yep. So to spare my poor mother from the many rants about this script and her repressed memories of a young me just watching the show on repeat, I’m here to talk about it from a script perspective.

I’m so glad this is the main thing I use my degree for. To spare us all, I’m shoving this in parts because I’m so glad they shoved this script into a five act structure to make this easier for me.

So let’s start this off with the ten minute teaser at the beginning. Apparently, this all starts in 2003 with a seven-year-old Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles. They’re flying through the sky, and okay, I’ll give them some nostalgia factor for this. However, I’m saying this now - this reads like an animation script. This is live-action, and instead they’re really using the description of “cotton candy clouds”? Please, stick to whether you want it to be live-action or animation. Please.

Also, their dresses are described as impractical and it’s like... Guys. You’re already starting to describe the dresses as impractical for seven-year-olds. You know what else is impractical? Seven-year-olds destined to fight crime. 

Blossom is described as the leader, go-getter and goody-goody. Now, from what I remember - yeah that does describe Blossom. I’m really coming from a place of a person who’s memories of the show are only kinda coming back after 20 years so, if I get anything wrong then someone - please tell me.

Buttercup’s the scrappy, scowling tomboy - not even described by the narrator with that one. Instead, the narrator is just like she’s the tough one and a “hard-ass” and I wouldn’t describe a seven-year-old as a hard-ass. 

Then Bubbles. Poor, sweet innocent Bubbles, who always was my favourite as a child and what have they done to you. She was the sweet and cheerful one, most of the time - according to the narrator. And you know, I’ll accept the dialogue for the seven-year-old Bubbles saying woot. It was 2003, but you know, woot is not a word I’ve heard in ages. I know I’m fixating, but then she immediately after this mentions how the Professor mentions efficacy and you know what, I don’t think a seven-year-old would say the word efficacy and I just have a lot of issues with Bubbles dialogue in this script and this is just the start.

So they’re flying, they’re fighting a giant three-headed-pegasus monster but in my head, I’m just seeing that weird giant three-headed-dragon thing from My Little Pony and I don’t know why but we don’t see it much because you just know the writers were only thinking about how the producers will react to this, I see that “(don’t worry)” in the script and I know they’re just worrying the producers about the budget. 

Which is why we get a short-ass fight and then immediately after we get a flashback to 1996. To when they were created. Note: They weren’t born, they were created to be the age of 7 in 1996 and yet they’re still that age in 2003. Am I being pedantic? Yes. Is that bothering me a lot? Oh god yes.

Also Mojo Jojo is two people and just make him a monkey you cowards. I know you managed to get Gorilla Grodd in The Flash, so just do it. Instead, we’ve got Dr Joseph Mondel, who’s Utonium’s science partner. He’s there when they’re born and supposedly he and... Drake, are close. 

“Couldn’t have done this without you Mojo,” you are a liar Professor. You are not the man I remember you to be good sir. 

Then Professor Utonium gets his happy life, also with a hot girlfriend - why did you date Sara Bellum? I recall her being married to her work? Heaven forbid we have a single father being a good figure for his children. Right, CW? I’m so glad that we got Sara Bellum being reduced to becoming just Drake Utonium’s girlfriend (for now).

Next we’ve got them saving a bank from Fuzzy Lumpkins, and you know what? We don’t need this scene. I only hear the narrator and you should not be relying so much on the narrator because has no one told you show don’t tell? Because I’m pretty sure if I relied on a narrator for a show like this, my lecturers would have gutted me like a fish.

Mojo, who is still tragically not a monkey, is apparently sick with envy. He wanted to be like Elon Musk, and I say this again, he wanted to be like Elon Musk and how dare you insult Mojo Jojo in this way. But yeah, he was forgotten by Utonium once Utonium went famous and his son is now an obsessive Blossom fanboy. I wish I was joking. But this is no Jojo-joke. (I’ll show myself out, don’t worry).

Mojo has enough power to hold a rally, and say that Utonium stole his work and that the girls are dangerous and you know, as a concept? I’d be okay with that. I too would be worried about children with superpowers. Hell, I was a dick as a child. If I had powers? Damn son, I’d be the worst. 

But you know, he wasn’t their only enemy. They also had... puberty. God, I wish this was a joke. I really wish it was. 

Blossom, at age 17, despite how she should probably be 24 if she and her sisters were born at the age of 7 in 1996 - Yes, that’s my issue - is studying for SATs and they made it so Buttercup is cheating on her girlfriend. Thanks guys. Way to ruin Buttercup. Then we have Bubbles. Bubbles who is hungover, and forced flamingos in the zoo to drink Hypnotiq. 

I stand by my previous statement: Bubbles what have they done to you?

Also, despite Blossom being the leader and the apparent moral high-ground for the kids she doesn’t seem to be as goody-goody as she was described earlier on. I’d have thought she’d be against her siblings who are both forcing flamingos to drink and cheating on girlfriends - but no, she’s super chill with them. 

Added bonus: Buttercup doesn’t want to wear a dress because it’s compulsive heterosexuality. So, bad news everyone - dresses are completely heterosexual now. 

They go to fight Swampy, and Bubbles is literally treating everything like a TV-show and Drake has clearly been a horrible influence and Sara Bellum calls him out for it. She’s then classed as not being a member of the family, and dick move Drake. You had a good stepmother figure character but of course, she breaks up with him. (After nine years and being exclusive for seven. I... I can’t with Drake).

Next up giant squid robot appears while they fight Swampy. You know, despite there being lots of protestors, surely someone would have noticed by now that there’s only Mojo piloting that giant squid that will reek more damage than these teenagers? Right...? 

Nope, not so. Instead, there’s Blossom picking a fight with Anti-Powerpuff Protestors and Bubbles fighting Swampy, while Blossom is dealing with the giant squid robot being controlled by Mojo. Jojo’s co-piloting it and all I can think is, this guy literally has a Blossom action figure in his hand. This isn’t a crush, he’s literally obsessed. Giant squid robot destroys a building, Blossom tries to save people, ends up accidentally killing Mojo in front of his son.

On the plus side, Mojo had a monkey lab-rat partner but having a talking monkey was too real? God, I hate this.

But yeah, the Powerpuff Girls are now controversial despite the fact they didn’t kill Mojo. I mean, Blossom did accidentally, but she then got PTSD and ran away. Bubbles and Buttercup call out the protestors and the press outside their house and I just want to end this with: Just let Buttercup say Fuck.

...

That’s just the teaser. I’m really sorry everyone that is just the teaser and for the sake of it I’m only focusing on the script. I don’t wanna focus on the casting yet because you know? Imagining Turk as Professor Utonium is just pain.

I’m just gonna leave this one here and I’ll talk about the trainwreck that is Act I in a little while because really. Really. 

so basically here’s a script of “Basically I’m gay” by Daniel Howell, if someone needs it

link to a google doc

Hello Internet.

«Sex! Secrecy! And a whole lot of internal screaming. Starring Daniel Howell. One of the greatest mysteries of our generation. What is Dan’s sexuality?»

Spoiler alert. I’m not straight. Sex, the foundation of life and the only thing we’re really supposed to do. Everyone’s obsessed with it. You bunch of degenerates. In the list of things that identify a person, one of the most important for other people to know is their sexuality. For, if sex is the primal force propelling all of these humans forward by their hips, they have to know. Are we gonna fuck? Or like could we? Or are you, ‘cause I’m just wondering. Now, we live in a heteronormative world, which is a long scary word that makes people feel attacked for some reason. Shh it’s okay.

What it means is people are presumed to be straight. If you’re not, then at some point, you have to “come out”, which is a whole thing. Or people might just try and guess based on something you do or the way you act, because yay stereotypes. So this is something you have to be clear on, because if you’re not, how are all these other people that aren’t you going to cope? But I’m pretty sure no one that knows me thinks I’m straight. So I don’t really need to come out as much as just clarify what the hell is going on. As here I am at age 27 and my sexual preference is seemingly still a vague, debatable, confusing, impenetrable mystery. But why? And what is it? Well, those are some big questions. Are you sure you wanna know my answers?

[YES]

Okay, well, if you say so 'cause this is a complicated and sensitive issue and when it comes to me, boy, there is a lot to unpack here and it is a total clusterfuck. So strap yourselves in and let me tell you a queer little story about a boy named Dan.

Chapter 1 – The Word

♪ When I was a young boy ♪

♪ My father ♪

Didn’t have much time for me because my conception was clearly an accident and he was a narcissistic proud man suddenly inconvenienced in the prime of his life and this emotional neglect gave me lasting problems.

Sorry that’s not all relevant right now.

I was an only child for seven years and with working parents. This meant I had to make my own fun so I was imaginative  and loud which is something that my teachers used to say quite a lot followed by, “However.” Here I am age five. Look at me. Cute, poised, sassy, turning out this photo shoot like sorry, Grandma, I stunted on this set. Are you seeing this? In almost every way, I literally peaked age five. I loved being the center of attention. People said I had an infectious happiness, that my beaming smile brought them hope and joy. People that know me are laughing right now. But a boy, in the '90s being happy and generally polite acting? Sounds kinda GAY if you ask me. Literally, masculinity was so fragile, people were so proud and scared and society so aggressive that a boy smiling!?.. appearing to be empathetic or in any way emoting was seen as a threat. How dare they laugh and feel comfortable? They must be soft and weak and girly and GAY. So basically thanks, Grandma, for raising me to be a nice child, you dick. Just kidding. That’s a joke and I told you not to watch this video because it would be rude so if you send me a disappointed text telling me you’re offended, I don’t know what to tell you. Although, now I think about it, you did make me go to church for 10 years, which in hindsight probably also didn’t help ♪ Hallelujah ♪ the issue here so. But then it was time for little Dan to go to school and this is when it  

♪ All went wrong ♪

'Cause it turns out most children, evil pieces of shit. Doesn’t matter if you try to raise a happy innocent child, throw that kid into school, aka, a literal Mad Max Battle Royale with the feral offspring of your local community. Yeah, that crap’ll be undone in about two weeks. I was six years old running around the playground pretending to be Sonic the Hedgehog or something when two brothers come up to me aged seven and eight with an unexplained aggressive look in their eye. And the younger one pushes me to the ground, kicks me in the stomach, and just says, “GAY.”

This was the first time I ever heard that word. Well, I don’t know what the heck gay means but apparently it means people kick you on the floor so that ain’t good. I didn’t know this child or give them any cause to have an opinion on me. And, actually, I never directly interacted with them again. What epic clustershit of failed parenting and general culture brought this tiny child to get angry and attack someone, then call them gay for looking like they were having fun outside. Are you okay, 1990s? And so my relationship with sexuality began.

I wasn’t looking to define myself as a child indiscriminately playing doctors and nurses with various friends until once somebody’s mum walked into a room to find three fully naked children sat on a bed sticking sellotape to each other’s butts. Yep, which I don’t recommend. Also, Jesus Christ, the poor woman that saw that. Then you get to the magic age around 10 or 11 where everybody suddenly wants to pretend they’re totally a “cool teenager” who’s doing all the drugs and the sex and the fights, totally. Boy, gay was a really popular word back then.

[[Boy] Uh, homework is gay. [Girl] Uh, my mum’s so gay. [Boy] Uh, you touched a girl, gay.]

This one little shit who I won’t name was one of the school bullies and he loved the word gay. He had it in for me and I have no idea why. You know me, Mr. Winnie the Pooh Meets Slender Man. Well, when I was 10 just Winnie the Pooh. I didn’t do nothin’ to no one ever and yet this guy used my pacifism as a punching bag where any group situation was an excuse to single me out call me gay for some reason and then make everyone else exclude me because they were scared of him. I had a girlfriend. We dated for six whole weeks. We kissed in a game of spin the bottle once by literally sucking on each other’s faces. Then she ended dumping me over speakerphone at a birthday party that everyone in my class but me was invited to but, hey. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but at this age, I understood one thing. Being gay, whatever that meant, was clearly the worst thing you could be. On a Darwinian level, I was being told, okay bitch, “Survival Code”. Don’t be this apparently. Evolution. Plot twist, this bully I think he was a bit gay because once he asked me to have a sleepover at his house and I thought was me finally getting socially accepted only for him in the middle of the night to come up and ask me, “So who’s going to be the boy and the girl?” I was an innocent smol bean who didn’t really understand what he meant because, to be honest, I didn’t actually understand get how babies were made yet. But needless to say I think he was disappointed. Wow, closeted child turns into homophobic bully. Thanks again society. But this whole primary school journey was really just an amuse-bouche for the full six-course tasting menu of suffering that would be secondary school.

I went to an all-boys school. It was a literal hellscape.  I thought it was hard making it through a school of 200 kids with two or three bullies. Try over a thousand where a clean 800 are fully psychopathic gorillas fueled by testosterone, Red Bull, and Eminem albums. Making sure that the word f- no longer means an innocent bundle of sticks or a cigarette anymore in the British lexicon. Nope, now it was a cool homophobic slur along with gay, gaylord, gayboy, puff, pufter, ponce, batty, batty boy, bum-boy, bender. Shit, this is so long. People have a lot of words for something they don’t wanna think about. Look at me in this stupid blazer. Oh, “you’ll grow into it at some point in the next four years”. Thanks, Mum. Day one, kid in form class, some stupid hedgehog-looking motherfucker side eyes me and says, “What you lookin at, puff?” First interaction at a new school. Great! My entire existence on a daily basis then becomes navigating this school like I’m in the bloody “Maze Runner” trying to avoid aggressive pricks with chode ties. And you know being verbally abused for being a nerd or a Greebo at least felt relevant to me at the time. Greebo, definitely one of my faves there and I’m sure that Korn and Slipknot would have been proud to have 12-year-old me as a fan. I kinda knew who I was in the hierarchy at that point. I was essentially a theater kid who spent all of his free time playing Runescape on the AOL browser on his mum’s PC instead of football. I accepted it. But at least I wasn’t actually this “gay thing” people kept throwing around because by now I understood a gay is a boy who fancies other boys. And to be honest I don’t really feel like I’ve ever fancied anyone before.

Then puberty happened.

Oh yeah, this is fun, tingly feelings, I smell bad. It was quite fun dribbling on this girl’s face playing Truth or Dare, maybe later we’ll go behind that bike sheds and, there I was sat in English class, my friend next to me. I watched as he delicately removes a pencil from its case. We briefly make eye contact as he flutters his long black eyelashes with a blink before staring forward. His eyes are so bright and beautiful yet they seem so sad and deep with emotion. I wish I could just understand. Oh fuck, I think I’m a bit gay. You’re telling me this whole time I actually have been the bad thing that people keep calling me? Shit!

Chapter 2 – Feelings

Oh do you hear it that faint hum, something coming from a deep, dark place too powerful to control? It’s the self-hatred. She is here and she’s only getting started. Short version, I fall hopelessly in love with a friend of mine who doesn’t feel the same way which crushes me into a million tiny pieces and years later actually it turns out he was gay the whole time. He just really specifically didn’t like me. [Double kill.] Here I am, 13, crying to evanescence alone in my bedroom feeling like there’s no point in really being alive as I’m clearly a faulty outcast person that has no place in the world. I stopped going to church with my grandma because I felt like I wasn’t really supposed to be there. Also, by this age, the whole Christianity thing didn’t really make much sense to me. And the adult services were dry AF compared to coloring in a picture of Jesus’s face at Sunday school. So other than the free tea and biscuits they gave away after the sermon, religion didn’t really have much to offer me. Damn, there was some good biscuits though. I miss that. But wait! All is not lost yet. Do you see that? A triumphant, rallying cry of guitars, stripey hoodies, and black hair dye. Emo had arrived! I swear to God, emo is one of the best things that happened to pop culture in the last 20 years. As well as inventing eyeliner and skinny jeans, a new word hit the theater, nerd, goth, band, kid corner that would change my world forever.

Bisexual. You can be normal and gay at the same time and some people think it’s cool? Well, slap a long fingerless glove on my arm and sign me up to Myspace 'cause Mum, I’m bi. It was a good term 'cause it was a catchall for anyone who felt sexually confused or curious that didn’t want to commit to something stronger which is very me. Big commitment issues. Thanks, fam. To be clear, regardless of whatever the 2006 teenagers thoughts and feelings were, being bi is valid and should not be excused away or erased by anyone. Thank you.

From this moment, I was a loud and proud raving bi to my close friends and the strangers on the internet who saw my clearly-labeled sexual preference on my Myspace page. And the emo friends I made at this time were awesome. We just used to hang and make out with each other and listen to music and drink bottles of Smirnoff Ice until we were sick on each other with no judgment. The judgment came several years later looking back at the photos that you can’t delete. So I didn’t need to tell my family or people at school anything. But the thing is with a Myspace page, anyone with an internet connection can read it. And so the rumors started spreading through my neighborhood that Dan Howell was in fact a bisexual. I had a friend in French class who one day, totally unprompted, just turned to me and said, “Hmm, yeah, I thought so. You give off a bi-vibe.” A bi-vi-, what the fuck is a bi-vibe? Great, yeah, nothing to make a 15-year-old feel self-conscious about his behavior like being told he emanates a bisexual aura. What am I supposed to do with that? Sorry that I give off mixed signals. I’m versatile. Turns out it was actually a social upgrade from being called gay all the time 'cause bisexual was a new word that only referred to sexuality so people actually had to decide how they felt about the fact I was attracted to boys. As opposed to gay which as we all understand is synonymous with bad and also implies a general threat, plague, curse/evil force that simply must be destroyed. People at school were actually almost nice to me with curiosity about it and a few of the boys that previously loved to just generically call me gay while throwing a compasses at me or something, now started to low-key flirt with me and some stuff happened. Go figure.

But then I entered the dark ages and no I’m not talking about my hair because I was never actually cool enough to commit to dying it black. As quickly as they arrived into my life, my emo friend group vanished into the night. Like the tip of an eyeliner pencil snapping or the HTML on your intricately-crafted MySpace page falling apart when the host websites of your embedded gifs die, so, too, did my social life. One had to suddenly focus on school, another moved town, two of them just fell out with each other and started hanging out with their old friends again. Well, we don’t all have back up friend groups, Lindsey! I went all in on the emos! You’re telling me I have to go back to sitting in my kitchen playing Runescape now! Thanks a lot. So for a year I literally had no friends. And this is when the bullying at school really stepped its pussy up. The things people used to say offhand to me in a corridor were now said loudly in classrooms where everybody would laugh. People used to sing songs about me being gay on the bus while my fellow nerds sat around me just stared awkwardly out of the window not wanting to get involved. People shouted things out during GCSE exams in front of the whole school and the low key pushing became punches. People used to wait for me after school just to throw things at me. Once a guy put his hand around my throat and pushed my head against a coat peg in the locker room while everyone was watching and just slapped me for five minutes. But I never reacted. I never cried or got angry or fought back 'cause then I’d be giving them what they wanted and I refused to play along. But this way of dealing with things definitely had an impact on my relationship with emotion going into life. I became a total outcast. No one wanted to come near me out of fear that they’d get targeted, too. So no one ever stood up for me. And, you know, I don’t blame them. I just resent them even to this day. No, I’m kidding, I don’t really. I do. No, I don’t. I, hmm. Teachers at the time obviously did nothing. In fact, one of them saw this happening to me and laughed 'cause you know, boys will be boys especially the gay ones that get killed by the other ones, am I right? Ah, classic lad banter. And home. See, keeping this on the topic of sexuality and not economic class, violence, addiction, and health issues, let’s just say some shit was goin’ down. I didn’t think I could ask my family for help or share my feelings about this, mainly due to my dad. Funny guy, kind of a woke hippie who did and said a lot of things I did respect but at the same time used to walk around the house saying how he hoped someone he had a problem with at work would *clears throat* “die of bum cancer.” Yep, so picked the one area to be a bigot that would further traumatize your child. Nice! This experience coming from a childhood hearing the word gay meaninglessly thrown around as an insult at home and school, in music, on TV, to then realizing I am actually kinda gay, to then very specifically being attacked for it was traumatic. The world was clearly telling me if I ever wanted to be accepted by anyone or, in my particular environment, survive, I couldn’t be gay. I was afraid of it, literally homophobic of myself. I am talking Pavlov, sunken place, North Korea-level mind alteration that made me terrified of and repulsed by this part of me. This is called internalized oppression. It’s a real thing and it’s some real shit.

Chapter 3 – Internalized Oppression

From this moment I was no longer advertising myself as bi. No, BRB deleting that Myspace real quick, xD lemme get on that Bebo. “My Chemical Romance”? No, I’m listen to what’s this, N-Dubz? Jesus Christ. I go away for the summer break and come back to school quiet and serious and fully straight. *coughs* I needed me some new friends that were a bit higher up the social ladder, you know what I’m sayin’ for security so I go ahead and join “The Inbetweeners”. Literally this group of friends, the exact middle ground between nerds and desperately wanting to be cool. And oh how desperate we were. The great thing about these friends was they knew loads of girls. So firstly, instant cool points. Secondly, if I date a girl *scoffs* super not gay. The problem with that was it’s not like everyone just forgot everything that’s been said about me and this group of friends, casually homophobic pretty much all the time and also they hung out in places near some even more aggressive and super homophobic peeps. Just full-time Runescape would have been a better in hindsight. I find myself going through the same shit at school but now voluntarily going through it at the weekends from the people that are supposed to be my friends thinking I’m doing the right thing whilst constantly telling myself I’m now totally heterosexual. So I did what many people choose to do at that point and I got a girlfriend. But this is pretty messed up because I really liked this girl. In fact, I loved her as a friend and I was genuinely attracted to her but I was so afraid of sexuality I didn’t even wanna do anything straight in case I had some weird gay panic that I was totally frigid and I led her on. And when she got pissed at me, understandably, for being a terrible boyfriend, I just felt even worse. This was someone who I liked that I was hurting and lying to but I couldn’t leave as then I’d have no armor. Beautiful irony here is having a girlfriend didn’t in any way stop the abuse 'cause remember, gay is a great all-purpose general insult. (Call someone gay today and we’ll throw in a free set of steak knives.) And when these neighborhood teens started heavy drinking and getting into drugs, things suddenly got quite scary as people joked about setting fire to a tent as I slept in it at Reading Festival. Or saying, “You know that notoriously unstable guy? Yeah, he said he’s gonna kill you next Saturday.” Awkward.

This was definitely the lowest point in my life. I just felt totally alone, confused and I deeply hated myself. I used to ask God, in case he was there, to please, just make me straight and everyone stop. But I saw no end, no escape, no way to change the world or who I was. So one evening I thought fuck it and I attempted suicide.

I say attempted, because just before it was too late I thought

“oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit what have i done what have i done fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck?”

“what will your grandma think don’t do this to her she tried her best and she loves you”

“your family aren’t total dicks and this will fuck them up can’t you just get over it surely”

“you’re gonna get to the last year of school and give up now really what was the point”

“I heard this is one of the most painful ways to die so not a great choice if I’m being blunt”

Felt kinda bad for a few days otherwise I pretended it never happened and I didn’t tell anyone, until now, literally. Hmm, I know pretty dark right, but hey spoiler things kinda worked out. I mean still gotta lot of issues but here I am. I’m so glad I failed for so many reasons, for the people in my life, for the future I would’ve wasted. The most important being that I thought I was trapped in a situation forever when in reality, the entire world I lived in and my life changed completely. I thought it was hopeless when in reality there was so much to hope for and that’s it. Time changes everything. With the lives that we have, we can try anything we’ve dreamed of. I want anyone that’s ever felt like this to realize you are never trapped. There is always hope. You just need to believe in yourself and get to the other side. So yeah school age 6 to 18, I’m gonna give that a bad Google review. The thing is I did stand out. I’ve always been a loudmouth, class clown, annoying shit. Since graduating, it turns out half the people I knew were fuckin’ gay. That group of friends I had, all lovely people now. Five of them were gay, five gays! That is statistically irregular. Oh but they flew under the radar. All I’m saying is I wish people just hated me for being annoying and immature. Leave the gays alone!

My light at the end of the tunnel was university. I was gonna get my A levels move to a new town and ghost these bitches. But I took a gap year first to earn some money which was very boring sitting at home and working at ASDA where I was not happy to help. My shift started at 5 a.m. on a Saturday. Signed up for a Twitter account to run my mouth off and then bam. “So my name is [Dan].” My YouTube story begins, a new chapter of my life to redefine. So you know what I do? Get a Formspring because nothing gives you that attention feeling like one of those anonymous question and answer websites that are inherently toxic and no one should use. And straight out of the bat bisexual Dan returns. 'Cause hey, just like Myspace, I’m only telling a few people on the internet right now. It’s not like one day I’m gonna get so many followers that random strangers and my family might see it. Wow, I had a lot fun with many different kinds of people in 2009. Let’s just say I got a lot out of my system. Got a couple of things in my system, too. Sorry.

And this is when, through the magic of the internet, I met Phil. And obviously we were more than friends but it was more than just romantic. This is someone that genuinely liked me. I trusted them. And for the first time since I was a tiny child, I actually felt safe. And the relationship we formed at that point was something that I needed in my life. We are real best friends, companions through life, like actual soulmates, not that souls are a real thing that exist. It’s so lucky to just find someone you can be that compatible with and especially to anyone that has experienced the kind of self-hatred that I have dealt with, one person accepting you can make all the difference. And I bet so many people wanna know so much more about that which, honestly, I take as a compliment. But here’s the thing. I’m somebody that wants to keep the details of my personal life private. So is Phil. I know lots of people these days, thanks to social media, want to share and monetize every aspect of their life and then as soon as something changes suddenly it’s this huge drama because everybody got invested in the story of your life like it’s a soap opera. I don’t want that. I wanna do certain things without an audience. I wanna be spontaneous. I don’t wanna feel afraid to take risks. I want to enjoy totally fucking something up and not have to post a statement about it. And if anyone thinks people really have to share these things about their life, you need to rethink your position. And look, I understand that sex is a fun and interesting thing to talk about. I get it. I am also a disgusting pervert. But the specific minutiae of who I be fuckin’, when, why, where, how long, how, uhh, I mean? Sexuality is a general fact that it can be very useful to know about a person for several reasons, but we can’t force people to disclose that either. We don’t know this person’s life story, what they’ve been through, if they haven’t told people, if they’ll lose their job, if they’re in danger. There are so many reasons someone might not be open about it. We can preach the message that being out is good, but aggressively speculating or trying to out someone is really bad. They might not be gay, in which case we’re just harassing someone and probably stereotyping. And if they are there’s gonna be a reason why they haven’t talked about it. So I don’t wanna see any responses to me finally talking about this like no one is surprised. “Dan we been knew.” Wow, you huge galaxy brain genius. What’s it like walking around with all those brain cells in there working overtime? What, you got like three in there? Don’t lose your balance, mastermind. I haven’t exactly been subtle have I? I’m an awkward, sexually ambiguous nerd. “What the fuck even is your sexuality?” That’s not the point. I’m already dead inside so it doesn’t matter here, but to me if someone’s reaction to a person coming out is just, “yeah, I knew”, they’re showing no empathy towards the issue or that person. They’re just making it about themselves like it was a fun piece of gossip they already knew. All we have to do is listen and be accepting.

So anyway back to the tale. Whilst things were looking up for Dan aged 18, things quickly got messy again. Wow, that beats the emo streak of temporary self-acceptance by like six months, nice. There was a point around 2011 where the relationship with my audience shifted from what felt like direct communication between me and individuals that just saw me as a comedy creator to communities of people that formed to talk about me when I wasn’t there. Which is fine, but for some people it was about getting generally invested in me and my real life which I thought was a bit strange 'cause inevitably like anyone who puts themself out there, some people started to really dig into my private life to find out information about me that I wasn’t ready to share. And this was around the same time that YouTubers finally started to get mainstream recognition in the British press. We had the BBC knocking at our door trying to offer Dan and Phil a radio show. From that, Dan and Phil became this entertainment duo that we could have a creative career with. And we love working together, so when all these opportunities came for Dan and Phil, we were really excited but I was also scared as people clearly knew I wasn’t straight and I hadn’t told my family that. None of my old friends knew about this, and what me and Phil had was ours and personal and yet some people were trying to get access to it for their own satisfaction. It was no longer a few people on the internet, no big deal. So I just shut down. It felt like I was back at school again, surrounded by threatening people trying to expose me for their entertainment. Most I’m sure just wanted what was best for me and I feel such genuine sadness and am sorry that I couldn’t be closer to and more truthful with the people in my life that were just trying to be nice but I wasn’t ready to deal with it at this time so I had to do something to contain it. I definitely sent some mixed messages. Some were just joking around, others were super defensive that in my panic came across like “I’m now telling everyone I’m totally straight” when all I really meant was “please fuck off and don’t invade my privacy, you creepy stalkers, thank you”. But this experience seriously triggered some PTSD in me and I was back in the dark place. I didn’t want to just disappear from the internet to escape it and throw away this creative hobby that actually started paying rent. Thanks. So I just decided to put anything to do with my sexuality in a box to come back to later as I was still processing my past and I wanted to understand my identity on my own terms and timeline and not just have it hijacked as fuel for people’s sexual fantasies or some headline in an article. And whilst we’re not exactly living in a utopia yet here on YouTube, the general internet culture only five or six years ago was a much less wholesome, progressive place as this little bubble is now. Sure, a lot of people probably would have been supportive, but there was just as much open bigotry and general toxicity 'cause people felt less accountable and it was okay to say certain things 'cause it’s just on the internet and I couldn’t handle that at the time. And, generally, I can handle a lot. I have big hands with a very wide reach for playing piano, you fucking.. get your mind out of the gutter. We can’t ask people to just put their lives on hold to address their sexuality first. If a kid dreams of being a footballer and age 18 gets signed to a club and all their dreams come true but they’re scared to come out because of the insane homophobia in that community, they shouldn’t turn it down. Yes, it’s so important to be truthful about who you are and open and proud in front of the world but it’s our society’s fault that these people are scared to say who they are. So let’s all focus on making it a welcoming place and people will come out when they are ready. So when was I ready? Well, it’s always been on my mind that I need to talk about this at some point. I couldn’t just keep going forward in my life ignoring it, not only just so I can be authentic, which is very important for general existing, but also just letting people know what kind of sexual attention I want from the world. All of it from everyone. God I’m so thirsty. And if anything motivated me, it’s the idea that I can help someone else 'cause that’s basically my whole career, isn’t it, admitting to shit that I’ve been through so you will feel better about yourselves. There we go, you’re welcome. I have a platform and a following of millions of people, many of whom I know have been through exactly what I have. And if I tell my story as painful and flip floppy and flawed as it is, I know it will mean something to someone as every time someone speaks openly about sexuality, it saves lives. I’d never met a single out gay person until I was 18. And if I had, or even just seen better representation in the media, I wouldn’t have felt so totally alone. I wouldn’t even be saying this to you now if it wasn’t for TV shows, musicians, and public figures in the last couple years reinforcing this to me. It doesn’t matter if I was living the life privately as there was still so much confusion about my feelings and fear. But things are better now, on the internet, on TV, in my real life. It’s not perfect but it feels safe enough in this space right now for me to feel confident. So thank you, sincerely, to all the brave people that came before me and to any of you that made this world seem welcoming for me. And instead of procrastinating from this by focusing on work, which was a way for me to insure my own independence and survival in case I was rejected, or just doing things for other people to take my mind off it instead of asserting my own needs, which my therapist keeps telling me is one of my biggest problems. Here I am with a fresh void of time in front of me to fuck up however I want. Now look, we all have different experiences in life. Some of us are lucky, some of us not. It just so happened that the first 18 years of my life were horrendously shit. It failed me. But we get dealt cards from the start, too. If you look at my life, I was born into this world as an able-bodied, white, cis-man in Britain which immediately gives me so much privilege in this current world and I am fully aware of how much harder making it to today could have been for me, which is why we all need to stand up for equality and social justice even if it doesn’t apply to us. No one stood up for me when it mattered the most and that almost cost me everything. So if you see a woman being harassed, a gay being threatened, someone muttering something racist, say something, do something because if you’re still or silent, the victim will just think that you are against them, too. We all have a responsibility.

This tale was just some of the stuff relating to sexuality. We all have a whole sob story if we wanna tell it but I just wanted to explain the journey of how I got to this point and overcame the obstacles that tried to block this path. And now I’ve arrived.

Chapter 4 – Labels

Okay cool story, bro, it’s answer time. What’s your answer. Whaddayalikedafuk? Here’s the thing, you want me to talk candidly about sexuality as if it’s something that I understand? I don’t know what it is, why it is. Turns out no one knows. I’ve been sitting here for years waiting for scientists to just work it out like bleep bloop. [Oh this is why and exactly how it’s different for people. There we go.] Thinking I shouldn’t run off my mouth on the internet in case my theories and opinions on varying gayness get debunked next week. Well, I waited long enough and it didn’t happen. Science, ya fucked up, you let me down. And I fully expect to have to delete this video in two weeks when you find out all the answers suddenly. Thanks a bunch. What makes someone gay or straight or all the things in between? What the ever loving fuck is gender about? This is a mess. Yet people want you to give them a word because that’s how humans communicate with words that have meanings. Which is why our disgusting species is impatient, stupid, and obsessed with labels. And this applies to everything, sexuality, gender, political identity, what obscure genre of synthwave you listen to. People just want a label that represents something they understand so they already know how to feel about you and don’t have to bother thinking. [Oh you’re a feminist well I don’t need to know anything more. Oh you’re a leftist. Oh you’re a K-pop fan but but but but.] If people just want to find a way to disagree with you or dislike you, they can refer to the label and turn off their brains. Hey, what does my label say? Huh. The issue is, especially when we start talking about the writhing mass of confusion and suffering that is sexual and gender identity, the limits of language and specific terminology become a big problem. What does being gay mean? You never thought about a boob once? What does being a man mean? You wanna be an emotionless rock rubbing raw steaks against your biceps? It’s not like humanity is all in agreement right now. I don’t like the stereotypes and drama that come with all this terminology so I’m just not gonna use it. Thing is gender identity isn’t my issue. I feel comfortable with the identity that I’ve had my whole life. Dan, a tol boy from England. But being a man means nothing to me. I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable wearing makeup or a sickening pair of heels, though I can’t even draw in a straight line so that would be a disaster. Also is anyone really comfortable wearing heels? Hmm. Icons of masculinity aren’t really a big part of my life. Might as well call me a fucking formless blob that sounds more relatable. Shout out to all my formless blobs out there, rise up. I don’t have to do anything or be anything and I personally wouldn’t feel offended if I wasn’t referred to as a he. Well, she’s feeling hungry today. Stop fucking judging me, Susan. I’m sad and I’m gonna eat this whole damn cake whether you like it or not. But anyone that has this don’t really care attitude about their gender identity is in a way privileged 'cause some people, especially trans, care a lot about their gender identity and using the correct pronouns which other people should respect. Likewise with sexuality, whilst to me the endlessly increasing list of tribes and flags being flown is a bit daunting and confusing and personally stresses me out 'cause I almost find it constrictive, some people like it. Because if you’re feelings are confusing and then you look at a word that represents something and go, “wow, that me”, it can help you realize you’re valid and find a community and that’s great. There is so much controversy around this issue and others but if we all just calm down, respect each other’s experiences and try to just be nice, reasonable people, which is a lot to ask, let’s be real, it’s quite simple. If you wanna use language to express your honest feelings and identity, that’s great and other people should respect what you say. Likewise, if you hate labels and you just wanna be a formless blob, that’s fine, too. No one should force you. The only thing that isn’t cool is telling other people what they should or should not identify as 'cause that ain’t your problem or your business, bye. This was one of the things that held me back from talking about this for years. Shit’s confusing, man. Let’s just go back to cellular reproduction by mitosis so I don’t really have to be specific. Two people that I really look up to and respect, Harry Styles and Janelle Monae, both famously say that they don’t feel the need to label it which, to be honest, is how I feel and is perfectly okay. But I get it, for me, you want a word. Oh, that’s hard, though. I’m an annoying guy. I feel uncertain specifying my sexuality in the same way I wouldn’t say I am an atheist. Who the fuck am I to say whether God does or doesn’t exist? I don’t know shit 'bout shit and neither does anyone else. I mean I think it’s unlikely in the same way I know I like DICK. But I’m not gonna pretend to have a definite answer here. Looking at my public statements is inconsistent and confusing. Looking at my personal track record through life is super confusing. And looking at the void inside my soul threatening to crush the entire universe with the force of its event horizon of misery and melodrama, well, fuck let’s close that shit up. One thing’s for sure whatever heterosexual is, I ain’t it. Really if you ask me, I don’t think anyone’s totally straight. I think there’s a lot of social and emotional issues getting in the way of yet to be understood feelings of attraction that can be very flexible. And trust me, I’ve known a lot of straight guys until a couple of drinks, some deep conversation, and lingering eye contact, and suddenly they just start leaning in. What does that make them? And am I totally gay? No. Am I slightly more gay or is it just easier for gays to hook up with each other because of societal norms. It’s not like the signs for male and female bathrooms are what I’m attracted to. I don’t care what flesh organ you have between your legs, what your hair’s like, if you’re covered in it or a fuckin’ beluga whale. I’m gonna be honest, I’m not picky. I’m easy. So am I bi or pan or poly? Well, now we’re just in a clusterfuck of defining language and I’m confused and sad and horny. This is why I personally love the word queer. I understand that some people don’t as it is a slur but as someone that’s been the target of it several times throughout my life I’m up for some reclamation. It’s like recycling. The definition makes sense because until society is equal with all sexual and gender identifies, it is literally strange from a conventional viewpoint plus it’s better than a super long acronym, it’s inclusive of everyone and therefore great for formless blobs. There we go, an identity I feel comfortable with. A highly-strung, depressed queer praying for a giant meteor to hurry up and finally eradicate humanity. LMAO, yeet!

But to come full circle, I know that even today, deep in my heart the word gay scares me because that’s how I’ve been conditioned my whole life. So, you know what? Fuck the literal definition and the scientific definition and what everyone thinks. I finally have to just confront and accept this.

I’m gay.

Oh look, didn’t spontaneously fucking combust. Well, there we go, that was a lot of stress about nothing, wasn’t it? Bloody hell. So yup, I’m here, I’m queer, and don’t worry I’m still filled with existential fear.

WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER WE’RE FILLED WITH EXISTENTIAL FEAR.

Chapter 5 – Fear

Even though I’m at this current place, there is still so much I’m afraid of and this has taken months to make because of that. Telling my family was a big fear. I have problems connecting with them emotionally because reasons. So I only came out to them this month and if it didn’t go well, as I’m now the independent adult that I fought so hard to be, I was ready to cut them off like the bottom of a sweater turning into a seasonal crop. But I didn’t have to, love you. I didn’t think they’d reject me these days but coming out is still a surprise. It changes things. And I’m a pretty awkward person generally but the idea of just dropping this in conversation in front of them all terrified me. And I tried several times this year to do it but I just couldn’t. So you know how I finally came out to my family? E-mail. Yep, I literally just sent them an e-mail saying and I quote,

“Hello gang. I’ve been meaning to talk to you all for a while, something quite important that should be disclosed at some point. I thought I would around Christmas, then Mum’s birthday, then last Easter Sunday, etc., but every time I meant to, I either felt like I would ruin the mood of the day or I just felt awkward and didn’t want to. So I decided just to email you all instead which is really inappropriate and just weird but that somehow seems appropriate for me and at least I’ll just finally say it.

Basically I’m gay.”

Yup. It was just getting ridiculous so I thought screw it and hey, it worked. Turns out my remaining family, pretty chill bunch of people. Even my Christian grandma said this,

“We love you for being you. It must be a great relief to finally acknowledge who you are. Popsie and I just want you to be happy. People are born as they are and have no say in it. I hope that now you will feel free to live your life as you want with no pretense.”

Aw.

“Don’t forget the iPad.”

Yes, I said I’d give her my old iPad. She mainly cares about that I thing. Wasn’t so sure when I was 17 but it went well now and I know that makes me lucky but, hey, it shows that times change. As for the other people in my life, obviously all the friends I have now are cool. If anyone in my life I’ve ever known isn’t cool with it then I don’t care. And sure here online there might be a few incredibly lost bigots following me or just some classic trolls who I think should get fucked. No, like literally, I think you should try it. You’ll probably enjoy it and you might learn something about yourself. Inevitably some of you watching this might have a weird reaction if you just feel like it was a shock or you feel hurt that I kept it from you. But I feel like I explained myself reasonably here and going forward I can’t have any space for that, sorry. I’ve come to terms with who I am and now you have to, too, ha. Funnily enough straight up homophobia is probably the one thing I’m not that afraid of, because I just don’t agree so it doesn’t hold much emotional power over me but you bet I’m opening myself up to all new kinds of in real life and international discrimination now which is fun. But one of the other big fears holding me back was, honestly, that I wouldn’t be accepted by the community. I know that it’s a big pride flag covering a lot of ground and even the idea of it and certainly most of it is amazing. But there is a lot of drama within it right now especially on the internet. You’ve got Grindr gays arguing about how manly gays should be, bi’s getting ignored, trans people, especially of color, not being historically appreciated, acephobia, fucking SWERFs and TERFs. No thank you. So even though they are my people, I know some of them will have problems with something. And even then, just seeing such a loud and proud, strong and opinionated group of people celebrating something just intimidates a smol introvert such as myself. And in my mind if these people don’t accept me because I’m not being definitive enough or I took too long then I almost feel like I’ll be alone all over again, and this is a fear that a lot of people have honestly. But I’m a nice guy and I’m trying my best so you better be welcoming, you bunch of fuckin’ queers. And obviously with the topic of sexuality, it doesn’t matter where we are or how far you think we’ve come, by merely mentioning it, I will be opening up a primordial box of bullshit which will include every single stupid argument and question since the dawn of time. [It’s not natural.] There’s gay animals. [Adam and Steve.] That’s based on a story and the protagonist that arrives later probably doesn’t agree with you. [Why can’t we have straight pride?] I could spend 10 hours on all the classic crap and people would still be asking the same things. This being posted on the internet, my hopes are so incredibly low, lower than my self-esteem.  Wow, that is unhealthy. I need to stop doing that. This video is about internalized oppression and the problems of language. I’m not here to pontificate on every topic tangentially related to the entire concept of gayness. *ASMR voice*: Pontificate on every topic tangentially related to the concept of gayness.  

There’s other humans and all the time in the world left for that. The time in the world coincidentally being not much longer. Climate change LMAO. But I had to tell my story so people would understand me and these things. Why coming out is still a big deal because queer people are often invisible and suffering until they have to do it. Some people grow up in supportive environments and it’s a positive experience. But more likely, especially around the world outside of the big cities, it isn’t. This is not a fight that is anywhere near over. Even in Britain today people are debating whether children should be taught to be accepting of sexual and gender identity in school.

Queer people exist. Choosing not to accept them is not an option.

To anyone watching this that isn’t out, it’s okay. You’re okay. You were born this way, it’s right, and anyone that has a problem with it is wrong. Based on your circumstance, you might not feel ready to tell people yet or that it’s safe and that’s fine, too. Just know that living your truth, with pride, is the way to be happy. You are valid. It gets so much better. And the future is clear. It’s pretty queer.

So there we go. Now I can proceed authentically in my life with full disclosure. Cute mutuals know to slide into the DMs. And you can all fuck off and leave me alone.

Bye.

I Shopped at YesStyle So You Don’t Have To: Lookbook no.10

Hi to anyone reading,

And welcome to what I guess is my first “review” post of sorts! Which is basically an excuse for me to rave about Korean street style and ask why the fuck Seoul fashion week isn’t more of a big deal!? Though I’ve pretty much quit fast fashion over the last few months and have been getting my clothes from Depop, I did want to talk about the website YesStyle which I ordered from back in May (jfc, the fact that May was almost 4 months ago now is terrifying) and how impressed I was with their service and the clothes I received. It should go without saying from the fact that investing in someone with about 200 followers on here wouldn’t be a very good financial decision, but this isn’t a sponsored post-I just think that if you’re gonna order from anywhere, YesStyle is a good shout for those of you who, like myself, are inspired by East Asian street style. I have to give credit to the incredible Katie O, otherwise known as StealTheSpotlight on Youtube and Instagram; she’s the medium through which I’ve been introduced to the world of “k-fashion” and YesStyle in the first place. Yes, my current knowledge of k-pop doesn’t extend far past fan tendencies to flood every popular tweet with fancams of their favourite singers and girl groups (I admire the dedication), but through Katie’s content and Instagram accounts like TokyoFashion on Instagram,  I have come to the conclusion that the stylists behind these groups and Asian designers in general are owed a huge amount of credit by Western trend forecasters. If you have any Instagram account or blog recommendations with similar content please let me know! For now, I’m gonna give a run down of the pieces I ordered (most of which are still available), prices and sizing, and also a bit focussing on ethical concerns and what I could find out about their practices from my research.

DISCLAIMER: The photos used as backgrounds are mine. Yes, I’m in mourning over the fact that this time last year I was inter-railing, in case the ham-fisted insertion of touristy pics didn’t make that obvious. Remember when we could leave the country? When it didn’t feel like the world was ending? When everything didn’t seem to be going to absolute shit all at once? When there was a glimmer of hope that we wouldn’t spend the next 4 years being governed by the Conservatives here in Britain? Simpler times :-)

The Pieces

1. The Alizio V-Neck Camisole Top in White: £4.97, Size M

So, what you’re gonna get from the off here is that YesStyle’s prices seem ridiculously cheap, which is something I’ll address in the ethics section at the end of the post. For £4.97, you’d expect an ill-fitting SheIn/Zaful style number but I was so impressed by how flattering this top actually is. I was a size 8 and 32C for reference and my only complaint is that because the neckline has a slight plunge, it was a little awkward to wear with a t-shirt bra. You know, unless you’re into that cups poking out of the top kinda vibe that was a rite of passage for all British teenage girls going through puberty back in, like, 2009 when you wanted everyone to know you’d been on your first bra shopping trip to M&Co with your mum at the weekend. 

2. The Rhames High-Waist Plaid Mini Skirt in Purple: £9.12, Size M

Clueless being as iconic as it is, a plaid mini skirt is always going to be timeless and I know this is a piece I’m gonna be basing outfits around for a long time. It fit perfectly and is surprisingly good quality material; I was kind of expecting it to come in that super thin, semi-see through jersey that you get when you order from a lot of UK fast fashion sites, but a recurring feature of the clothes I picked out was that they were such good quality for the price and exactly as they appear online. I’ve found in the past that UK sites are deceptively canny with lighting and angles in that when the garment actually arrives (Boohoo in particular is a repeat offender in this regard) it’s a lot frumpier than it looks on the model. It seems to be common practice to pin back and temporarily alter the clothes during photoshoots to give the illusion that they’re a lot more fitted and structured than they actually are which ultimately just leads to disappointment when you try on the supposedly bodycon dress and resemble a sack of potatoes. Been there, done that. I worship the ground all carbs walk on but I don’t want to look like them. Should go without saying really. It’s nothing to do with size, but it’s just crappy tailoring and cutting corners on the brand’s part and that’s what irks me. I really appreciate that YesStyle has photos of “regular” people just wearing the clothes out rather than the outcomes of these overly edited, studio lit shoots that aren’t necessarily the most representative of how the garment is gonna look irl.

3. Nikiki Garter Belt: £5.59, One Size

As comfortable as garters come, I guess? I don’t have much experience with them tbh, lol. 2021 to do list, if we make it out of 2020 alive: try more garters.

4. Lucuna Floral Embroidered Cropped Cardigan in Almond: £15.61, One Size

Don’t get me wrong, this cardigan is adorable and there’s nothing misleading about the photo on the website. What I will say is that considering it only comes in one size, it’s pretty tight on the arms. I’m a size 6 right now and it’s really not like I’m ripped or anything (lol) so it’s safe to say that in terms of the Lucuna brand, their sizes come up very small. The cardigan wasn’t the only one size thing I purchased and whilst the others did fit, I think in general the fact that said “one size” is pretty much only suitable for UK sizes 4-8 is pretty shit. A few of the pieces had elasticated waistbands but in general in 2020, when we’ve come so far in the last few years with body positivity and being more inclusive of all sizes, to have a sample size that runs so small isn’t acceptable and this sizing issue is my biggest problem with the store. Though I recognise that YesStyle acts as an outlet for smaller East Asian brands (in this case Lucuna) and thus aren’t themselves responsible for the designs, more consideration should probably go into the harm that could potentially be done by stocking these supposedly “one size fits all” garments. Brandy Melville, I’m looking at you too. Your designs are cute but your lack of inclusivity is shitty.

5. Ohnana Ruffle Trim Strappy Cami Cropped Top in Purple: £5.01, Size M

I’m not as jazzed as I was about this top now it seems that everyone and their mother’s dog is selling it at an extortionate price on Depop but I will say that it’s also very flattering. Makes my strangely long torso look somewhat proportionate, which is nice. The material is pretty thin but it is for all intents and purposes a tank top and the price is reflective of that.

6. Sisyphi Plaid Shirt in Tangerine: £11.30, One Size

So the “one size” option strikes again, though this time with less vengeance-I would say this would be wearable up to size 12/14 so slightly better than with the cardigan.

7.  BBChic High-Waist Wide-Leg Jeans: £10.04, Size M

When it comes to these jeans, I only have good things to say. Like firstly, they make me feel like early 2000s Avril Lavigne AKA. my childhood icon/potential clone/queen of millennium grunge and an incarnation of Y2K fashion I can actually get behind. Secondly, they have an elasticated waistband, which is ALWAYS a good thing. Thirdly, they didn’t come up ridiculously long on me which I feared would be the case; I did wear the platform Filas with them but as you can see, it’s not like they’d be trailing over my feet even in flats. I’m somewhere between 5′3 and 5′4 for reference and usually go for petite in jeans  and trousers just to be on the safe side.

8.  HERMITAKH Ring Detail Halter Crop Top in Black: £5.15, Size M

I have only recently become a member of the itty bitty titty committee but even back when I shot this lookbook this halter actually fit! When it came to tops that necessitate going braless, I always had issues with finding pieces I didn’t feel were going to cause an unintentional free the nipple moment, but the fact that you can tie this top up at the neck and back yourself allows you to work out a fit that’s supportive for you. 

9. Puffie Lightning Print Straight-Cut Pants: £13.76, Size M

I’d wanted a pair of trousers like these for ages before I saw them on YesStyle but the ones I’d come across in the past were a bit extra for my hometown and typically cost more than they seemed to be worth. This pair lack the bulk that the original styles I came across had, which helps give them a more casual, laid back feel, though they are just as vibrant and substantial BUT there isn’t much give in them. They have the slightly baggy look I was going for however they aren’t elasticated on the waist so I recommend having a look at the guide that’s available next to the drop down box where you select the size you want.

 10. Alfie Mesh Long-Sleeve Top in Pink: £7.71, One Size

No, the Jennifer’s Body top isn’t from YesStyle, I’m sorry to disappoint. Go to RedBubble for that one! The considerably less exciting mesh top underneath however, is, and in spite of its relative mundanity (you can’t top Megan Fox as a man-eating demon) it does the job as a versatile staple piece. It’s one size but it does have a lot of stretch in it so would probably go up to about size 14 (not to say that’s great).

11. Barrash Harness Bag: £17.10, One Size

The harness vest is one of my favourite trends to come out of k-fashion and I wanted SO badly to pull this piece off (especially because it was one of the most expensive pieces I purchased from the site) but it was far too big for me even when I adjusted it and TBH...I don’t even know if it’s just the sizing? I kinda felt like a paranoid tourist with their bag on back to front and yeah...I don’t think that’s the desired effect. Here’s an example of how cool they CAN look from Seoul fashion week, and with that another example of why NYFW should lose its place in the “big 4″ to make room for SFW:

And just Blackpink just setting the standard for the utility wear trend in general:

12. Mikiko Short-Sleeved Blouse in White: £8.79, One Size

I appreciate that the website notes that the “one size” here runs small, however it does also say that a “base layer” is needed for under the shirt which I didn’t find was necessary at all. The fabric is quite thick and it genuinely looks like the kind of shirt you’d find tucked away in a vintage shop, cute af and will go with anything.

13. Closette Sleeveless V-Neck Vest in Black: £11.87, One Size

Again, I was really impressed with the quality of this jumper; it definitely looks like something you’d pick up in a uniform shop (though this one is probably cheaper because those shops are daylight fucking ROBBERY) but I can never get enough of that grungy school girl look. Blame St.Trinians. 

14. Niji Smile Pleated Plaid Skirt with Insert Shorts in Green: £9.12, Size M

This skirt might be my absolute favourite of the items I ordered on the sole basis that it comes with shorts built in underneath, like, WHY DON’T ALL MINI SKIRTS HAVE THIS!? Plus the shape and the bounce it has to it makes me feel ultra-feminine and effortlessly cute which I love. It didn’t even turn up crumpled! Which you’ve really got to admire considering half the clothes in my local H&M look like they’ve never got within 10 metres of an iron in their short lifespan. 

15. LINSI Elbow-Sleeve Print T-Shirt: £10.92, One Size

If I had to pick one more favourite piece, it would be this graphic top that I wore underneath a pink chiffon Ebay dress. It looks and fits exactly like the photos on the website and I have to restrain myself wasting a wear of it just lounging around the house because it’s also ridiculously comfy.

16. LINSI Plaid Straight-Cut Pants in Orange: Size M

These trousers are currently out of stock, however I will say that of everything I’ve ordered they’re probably the least comfy and on that basis I’m not sure if I’d buy them again. They look great and I will push myself to wear them for that reason but they’re the kind of itchy fabric that I rush to take off and swap for some pyjamas the moment I get into the house. That being said, I don’t know if this is an issue everyone will have because I am someone that is overly sensitive to fabrics so you might not even notice it, plus-stretchy waistband! Which is a plus for sure.

I was also very impressed by the accessories I ordered, which once again completely surpassed my quality expectations. Pretty much everything pictured here was under £5 apart from the shoulder bag which was closer to 10, and when you consider that the price of these is inflated at the moment because of the resurgence of the Y2K trend, this is still ridiculously cheap.

The prices are definitely a concern of mine because unfortunately, when products are this cheap there’s usually somebody being exploited down the line. Since I made this order in May, I’ve had a small slip up with a Motel Rocks order, but other than that have cut out fast fashion completely. I want to be as ethical a consumer as I can, and that’s something I considered before making this post; that being said, YesStyle, actually a Hong-Kong based company in spite of it being touted as the destination for k-fashion, was recognised as a "Caring Company" between 2014 and 2019 (I don’t think this has been updated for 2020 yet given the circumstances) by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service. From what I can find online, this award is given to Hong Kong companies that demonstrate good corporate citizenship and responsibility. Whilst this seems like reassuring information, like I said, I find it hard to believe that the production of clothes selling for these kinds of prices isn’t outsourced to low wage workers at some stage of the process. It’s a hard to know where to stand, because obviously the fast fashion industry DOES create jobs that people rely on to sustain themselves but at what point does the treatment of workers in developing countries negate the opportunities the industry provides here in the UK? “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” and all that but shouldn’t we try to make a change where we can? I agree with the statement though at times it can come across like a deflection of individual responsibility. Plus there’s the environmental side of the debate-having to fly the garments over from the point of manufacture obviously takes a massive amount of fuel which it goes without saying is hugely detrimental to our planet. The sizing is also an issue; the average clothes size here in the UK is a 12, I believe, and yet a size medium seems to come up as about an 8. Asian sizes do tend to come up smaller in general but at the same time, if that’s the case, as an international retailer shouldn’t YesStyle at least address that somewhere on the site?

I don’t want to end on a negative note because compared to sites like Zaful, SheIn, and even UK based retailers such as Pretty Little Thing and Boohoo, YesStyle appears to be one of the better ones. The quality of their garments is incredible for the prices and I admire the transparency of having reviews for every product be so readily accessible. It’s also great to see that they have a section specifically addressing their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, AND  offer refunds to their customers for import fees. God, I don’t know why this isn’t something that more websites do? I will never forget being slapped with a £100+ invoice for a Dolls Kill (bleurgh) order I made once back in the more impulsive shopping days and all the Karen-y emails I sent back and forth. Import fees are understandable but international retailers should definitely make it clearer how these are calculated and give more of an indication of just how steep these fees might be if you’re making a large order. It almost seems disingenuous not to do so especially when said retailers most likely know that customers wouldn’t make these orders if they had an idea of what it would cost just to get access to the goods they’ve already paid for.

I won’t ramble on for much longer because there is so much important shit going on in the world right now and I don’t want to take up time that could be spent reading more valuable posts-with the shooting of Jacob Blake earlier this week, and the death of Chadwick Boseman earlier today (I can’t imagine the amount of mental and physical strength it takes to film all the movies he did back to back whilst dealing with colon cancer), the most important thing to do is listen to how black individuals are feeling and what they are thinking right now. I will keep an eye on my dashboard and retweet what I can. Thanks for reading. Even if you’re just here for the photos, I appreciate it! And I don’t know if I’ve said it before but please know that my messages are always open to anyone struggling, especially with everything that’s going on at the moment. I don’t claim to be a professional but I can always listen. Lots of love<3

Lauren x

Body Image

Take your cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and enjoy my story on this.

As a disclaimer, this is my point of view over body image. And the story I tell in this writing is purely personal. I have not been able to tell this story in person because I feel like this is very sensitive topic for me to talk, but maybe I can tell and share my story and experience by this writing. Hope this make your day and make you feel less alone.

Before we talk deep, here is the definition of body image based on Wikipedia “Body image is a person's perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of his or her own body. It involves how a person sees himself or herself, compared to the standards that have been set by society. “ Based on that definition, the focus of my story will be on the physical appearance that affect my life.

I have been dealt with body image issue since I was a kid. Unconsciously, without knowing that the body image is such a thing, I already battle with it since I was a kid. The beginning of it was when I was on elementary school. For me personally, this time is the first time I encounter with body image. Elementary school was my first experience to meet a lot of people on my age. I started to learn that the uniformity is a thing. I want to blend in with them. Before I went to elementary school, I was raised on a fine family that did not differentiate people based on how their body look like. Before I went to elementary school, I thought it was okay to have messy hair. I thought it was okay to wear what we feel comfortable. I thought it was okay to have big tummy. That okay thought just last until I met people on my age. If I look back it now, little kid is just so evil. he he. Anyway, despite my good memories on elementary school, I remember I was not feeling good about how my body look. I realized this when I was on the third grade. My friend started to notice that I started grow boobs. How could they notice it before I did? Well it is because I feel there is nothing wrong on how my body grow. Well, that was a big hit for me. I started to hate my body. Why should I have boobs when I was a kid? Not like any other kid. I feel ashamed and embarrassed on how my body look. They make fun of how I look and it made me had low self-esteem. I did not know that there is term “insecure” back then, but yes, I was so insecure. It sucks to grow different than your friend. When I was a kid I just want to be like the other kid. I did not accept myself. I have self-loath. I feel like what I have, what my body has, is not as aesthetic. I thought I was ugly. I have boobs, I have messy hair, I have ugly taste of fashion. All those things become my nightmare. I always have question in my head “why should I be different than other kids?” “Why me?” and I of course I have “What it...” along with “only if.....” It sucks knowing that I am different because I am not like the standard girl back then.

Growing up on a small town as a teenager that has body image issue is not easy. When puberty stroke, I remember that I still insecure on my body image. That time when I was on junior high school, I started to know a little about Korean Drama. That was when I started to make my own standard of beautiful and that how I picture that their appearance is aesthetic, and obviously I am not like that. The battle of me and my boobs is still going on. I remember I prayed that my boobs to stop growing because I hate them growing. I hate people stare at my boobs. I hate people making fun of that. That was just fucked up. But unfortunately, the problem of body image is not stopping on the boobs. Puberty started to show me what pimple is. My battle with boobs is not done and now pimple. Thank you very much universe. I was just hate my body. Although if I re-read what I write, it seems like it is a big deal, I did not bring this up at home. This was my issue that I always keep for myself (I don’t know why after 16 years I finally have courage to spill the tea). At home, I was a happy kid, luckily because people at home never make me feel less valuable because I have boobs. But when I come to the perfect picture of a female, that is when I feel insecure again. I was comparing into someone I am not. And that made me feel not okay. So not okay. At the end, I still have the expectation that I could not achieve and that make me still hate my body. I still hate my look. I still feel bad about how my body turn out to be.

Next phase was high school. I remember that one time, there is one student from different class that mock my boobs, and I loathe him even if I remember that. How could they so harsh and so inconsiderate? Is the education they received not enough to be fully mannered gentleman? I took it hard but I started to feel numb. Yes, I numb my own feeling over that. That was time I started to focus my energy for something else. I joined school organization. I am surrounded myself with good people that respect me as a human that has value. Not only human that have certain body type to be accepted. I started to acknowledge that okay, I have boobs and there is nothing I can do to my boobs. I started to make friends with them (sounds so silly, but I did). I still compare myself and still have that body image in my head. But I did not let that take over my feeling and make me insecure. Wow, I am proud of myself writing this. I have gone through this far and thriving.

 If I can sum up my feeling over body image back then, they will be insecure, uncontrollable, low self-esteem, self-loath. Because the body image I have in my mind is, pretty, white skin, long-straight hair, tall, slender, clear skin.

 My childhood and the body image is not friend-like. They don’t go along in fact.

Now I want to tell you the turning point of how I see my body.

I feel so lucky that even though I come from a small town, I have chance to see broader by joining competition and meet new kind of people. I come to realization that at the end you need to have something to be proud of. If my boobs are not that, then I need to have something else. I should not focus on them. I started to make myself busy, I made friends, I watched things that bring me up, I did not surround myself with people that would not respect me as what my body look like. I once again, gain my confidence. I have something to offer. Not my body, but something else. The body image I have is replaced by the self-quality. I put my effort more on that. I am no longer putting the picture of “perfect body image” like when I was a kid. Therefore, I accept myself. Besides, what my body has is heritage from my ancestor. I am privileged to be the heir of their gene. I am healthy. I am fit. I am capable of doing physical thing. I won medals on swimming competition when I was on Junior High School & Senior High school despite the fact that I used to hate my boobs. I am still able to achieve all that all. 

Now I am almost 27, and I have different kind of body image. The body image I have is the healthy, and well care version of myself. Maybe that is way to thank what my body has given to me. I should not be ashamed for my boobs. I should be proud that even though people used to make fun of my body, I am still able to have those achievement with my body. 

Talking about body image now, since I already accept and love to be on my own skin, I also realize that confident has become friend. I feel like my body is aesthetic in my own way. I also feel like I am sexually attractive. Therefore, I will have courage to be in relationship, because I already feel good about myself. I am no longer battling with my self-esteem and have energy to accept another thing. 

If I can tell my 9-year-old me, I want to tell her that you will get through this.

Your road is not easy, it will be bumpy here and there, but you can conquer all that. You just need to hold into yourself longer. You need to believe and have courage. You are not less just because you have boobs. Your value is not decrease because you don’t look like a pretty Korean girl. You will define the body image of yourself for you. Don’t let other dictate that for your sake. They are not you. You have privilege to choose, use it wisely.

And here is for you who still battle with body image.

Set your goal based on yourself. Let you be the best version of you, not like someone else. Embrace what your gene gives you. Be proud of it so you can make friend with confidence.

Don’t let insecurity creeps you out. 

  Well, my sister is also writing about body image.

If you stumble upon my writing and want other insight, please check https://msmondrian.tumblr.com/

Hope you are not feel alone if you are still facing rough phase. Believe that you too can win too.

If you want to share your story, you can send message to me.

I’d gladly read and share with you.

Venus trine MC, my MC lies in Saturn and Saturn is in 9th house Aquarius.

Saturn Return, and my Soul Journey into 12th house Sun conjunct Mercury (in Aries) bound by the 12th house Shadow Secrets. Jupiter is Leo and Mars is softened by my conjunct cancer moon, both in my 3rd house. The kicker is Chiron simultaneously sitting over in my wounded goddess divine feminine Luna moon compelling me to build a home, a base and a clan of like minded souls. cancer and Chiron sit together and Chiron is akin to the wounded healer. I have a complex but alchemical natal make up and its been 6 years of accepting the square and oppositions in difficult places to come to terms to work with my natal astrology in a way I can become creatively involved in.

23/3/20 initiated the formal induction of my Saturn return as saturn transited to Aquarius for the first time since 92/93.

It’s a taste of the full saturnine swing coming up after the December 21st astrology grand conjunction. Saturn will be in Aquarius up to July. before moving briefly back before that grand Conjunction with Pluto/Jupiter later in 21/12/2020. (activity period from 14 April 2020 until mid-July 2020) Venus trine MC

Yeah on a tangent but one day I will be thankful this was forged. I am will using my moonchild manifesto to track the astrology and transits for my own wounded healer journey. I don’t have the consistency of a computer to hoard things as I did before the big brother fascism came full formed this year and cannot freely trust anything can be stored. I will be putting things online purely to keep a record of what may soon be lost, unable to be accessed.

Plus I’m burning my journals after I take the photos of them and upload them for a ritualistic purpose.

It’s part of this creative alchemy and trauma soul retrival quest I’ve found myself on. I note this as my Saturn is returning home for my FIRST Saturn return. I have been formally initiated for the infamous, enigmatic Saturn return that marks the passage from “adolescence into adulthood”. (Funnily last time I heard a university lecture on neuroscience, the latest research noted recent findings that the brain of a fully, functional prefrontal cortex in adult brains don’t become fully formed until age 28-30. This first sparked excitement and also uncertainty about the privilege cast to the “teenage myth”. As kids brains are still developing when things like getting a driving cars, choosing a life career, alcohol privilege and making other major life changes at those critical developmental stages are still as risky when a 12-16 year old does it. So now psychology and neuroscience knows that the adult higher order thinking that marks the turn of a mature and civil adult come in the late 20s. Not the teens. So until after 25 a brain cannot be fully assessing its choices due to underdeveloped prefrontal higher order thought processes This was fascinating in the social science side of things where we look into social constructs of society and how teenager was a made up archetype for a post war period. I remember being in my early 20s at the time and my life was no longer a race as it had been made to be prior.the schools of the latest brain neuroscience confirm my impulsive nature could change before age 30. I was hopeful. Maybe I wasn’t a gifted genius who was highly sensitive and afflicted with the contrasting “ADHD or Attention Deficit Primaily Inattentive” which could only be “treated” (as far as I had experienced), via heavy duty schedule 8 drugs. The kind of medication that calmed me down but other people wound beg me to have. Meaning in the past people in my life around me were constantly trying to turn into their party high by taking advantage of my disdain for psychostimulants. But my love and need for money back in that time. Fuck fake friends I say. Taking advantage or dysregulated prefrontal cortex with or without all my labels was still, after all, a risky business, when it comes to juggling psychopharmacology and a myriad of labels that resulted in other medicines given to me that may or may not be accurate. No brain scan or confirmation has been given that my brain is anything aside from ADHD. So my academic quest in childhood was confounded due to this.I learnt a lot about my childhood and growing up with a long list of multiple mental illness diagnosis, and the medical pharmacology given to me for those things; was beyond measurable.

But my neurochemistry was tweaked ineffably by both psychiatric pills pushed on me from age 9 and for things I may not even need. The end result of what my social science teacher termed “social constructs akin to mental illness medical model DSM labels”. My self pursuit of understanding my own brain was a hard thing to understand in the sense that prior to hearing about this from the side of academic and professional training, I had spend 12 years in expensive and possibly more damaging than beneficial treatment for “mental illnesses”. My life was a focal point for the goal I set to help women with the “borderline stigma” after I had fixed my own borderline.

Clinical psychologist was my end game until I found the trauma truth sweeping me into a existential soul contusion merged with trauma after trauma therapy went into flooding memory. Academic research and the psychology and counseling journals I spent my spare time fine combing. For answers. For my why and how. By the time I found any sense of this it became a painful limbo of dancing with my demons, coping destructively and limbo between the underworld and the reality I found my body and mind entwined in.

Now it’s even more synonymous to my own Saturn return journey and how the Saturn return is the mark of adulthood. This can be a speculative musing I make now on celestial astrology and how it aligns to our inner psychological makeup. (The Jupiter return is age 12, puberty ; and the other inner planets all mark significant development milestones in growing up. I’ll go into that more in later blogs).

Astrology is a map of the soul, psychology makeup, can be so deep too. How does it measure up to statistics? Sun sign horoscope is nothing versus the natal chart and how it corresponds to planetary magick and Kabbalah. I have been seperate in my magick and academic work but it was always my will to merge these at one stage I could research it. But now the sands of time are shifting, and Aquarius Saturn is calling for novel innovation I never could convey due to academic being seperate as spiritual, magickal practice is something I was careful to keep silence on when working with clients, peers and mentors, forget telling my psychologists or doctors who wound dismiss any test as “bipolar mania”. I remember once I read “the difference between the mystic and the mad man is the mystic knows who NOT TO TELL.

Now it’s my time to informally but officially start logging my journey into my own healing, soul mapping, I call it cognitive alchemy, gnostic psychology, soul psychology, metagnosis.. I’ve had many a name for the potential inspiration from my true will calling. But I can now forget about the archaic bonds from the academic world I was schooled to excel in by confirming. I am also a high iq gifted kid and having been labelled gifted but “adhd” simultaneously while having traumatic events left right and center is a mix of confusion for me. Teachers classed adhd as a learning disability, my in attention confused with inability to listen to simple tasks. This meant my mind never adapted to that school conditioning but my education was still installed due to the private school system somehow making my alters succeed without effort. Most of my spare time as a kid that wasn’t dissociative was reading books. By me processing my own literature in my spare time, I knew so much random stuff but hid it in order to seem dumb bc that was accepted. But in private in encyclopaedias and non fictional library quests I’d devour books. for my 10 maximum haul of borrowing books. This was a routine my mum and I went to do each week but my reading speed was beyond anything known, as I read and synthesised up to 10 books mostly in one day, from age 6 onwards.

I also stole books and hid my reading habits at school due to a deep shame of not being liked due to reading being for losers without friends, as girls bullied me over my gifted weird quirks. I was pretty but saw my self as ugly for trauma will deprive the mind of seeing it’s own true perception. I was never understood how my looks became a thing used against me by girls who were jealous until I learnt about this myself. I recently accepted and remembered this all after 3 years of integrated healing. I was doing this all on my own. the spiritual and metaphysical work is my primary tool that was keeping me here. Actually saving my suicide program from self destruct after the March 2017 incident I shall not talk about now. But I’m here now, alive, kicking, Saturn here to shove my shadow to consciousness without prompt and this change can bring me into a 30 year blueprint of setting things right.

Now in order to build a solid and functional framework and foundational life. I have a litany of secrets I need to get off my chest. I think to share my growth, my thoughts and my experiences for my own liberation of my deep dark secrets finally free to be released into the public domain.

I have no choice but to share this.

I do this co consciously as a part of my integrative process.

Maybe One day it might be a guide for someone who was as alone as I feel doing all of this self work without support. Maybe it will fade into the cyber void forever. Maybe I’ll use this as a tool to help clients in the future. Whatever this is means nothing but what the process of alchemy can do to forge my liberation from soul loss and traumatic dissociative trauma.

As a therapist I always wanted to avoid what I went through growing up. Now more so. I never want another lost dissociative mental health client who was also stuck between professional and academic pursuits being my “purpose” and having to sacrifice career and my study and research to sit in my shadow to see the shit.

In order to break the shit therapist mould I list journey through my own shit first. This meant I needed to be away from all therapy both as a client and practitioner and student for awhile. I’ve been off since the end of 2017 and now it’s clear it was neeed, how do I heal without healing my own shit first? Am I not the finest example of how bad therapists can get away with their bullshit and be paid for it but never really know who they are. I’m never doing that. I never was about that. So due to therapeutic negligence. I am finding my gift was the lesson. Those a shitty therapist who are a dime a dozen were the anti mentors I saw too often: but my purpose was to be a therapist. But a therapist who did things the way I never had.

Never did I want another to go into the heavy weight of shame from the secrets of sexual wounds, childhood schemas, mixed up and messed up conditioning made to seem functional to outsiders. But that was all alters. Now it was a spiritual journey as magick and my mystical path entwines to save my soul. The self awakening, trauma revelations, merging with the dark night of soul, and the shadow work. Plus everything else coming out is not a journey I can say is or was at all easy, I suffer more now as a co conscious intergrating my trauma. I feel it all without the dissociative switch to save me from witnessing all the shit. Now I see my entire life and it’s fucked up raw and grim reality and I have to do something because I survived it this far? Again I never suicided or stopped into self destruction when I knew my own inner child’s wounds were no longer blacked out but burning bright longing for love. Symptoms for survival and the survival was part of the dissociative switching making my outside self seem so functional, but never seen. It’s not something they needed to drug me for, but it’s another thing I have to address now. My symptoms they drugged with medications that were mind altering and powerful for anyone let alone a developing child’s brain, were suppressed by many meds. Who knows where that ends and the damage via trauma and other things begin? It’s a mess of some thing I was never aware of but always trying to silence due to the need for people to accept me. But that was many mes all living a life that appeased many people, but not for me. Here we are.

Eccentric, part 1: (gasp) a child!

You can tell I take myself seriously as a writer since I was originally planning on making this a stand-up-sounding twitter thread, doing my usual best turning the topic into a trendy depression meme while telling anyone who’d listen that I’ve decided to write “real articles” since I “can’t find a job in my field” (I’ve totally looked). So this is me taking a step. I get the tingling feeling it might sound exactly as it would have anyway, except this time i’m gonna have to pry readers from one platform they spend their time on to another that’s about real reading, and somehow this distance is a real marathon to close. I know because I don’t read, and i do run. I expect little and I hope for even less. 

Writing “for real”, as opposed to waxing my usual poetics, has been a terror of mine, along with praying mantises, stick insects and john mulaney’s wife, in a good way. It’s been my plan A as well as my every other plan for as long as I can remember, which is an excellent reason to stay away from it since nothing else could possibly keep it from failing. It’s almost like I didn’t believe in hard work, which is ironic for a person who spent hours a day playing over two-measures loops of music so I’d learn guitar solos for a man. Where’s the reward here? Non-gendered consideration? Give me a break. 

I’ve been told in school that a writer’s first work is oftentimes autobiographical, in reaction to which I thought it would be a funny idea to even try to write about anything else (who could possibly?). That was before I tried viewing it through the lens of standpoint theory and claiming the relevance of my situated point of view as if we needed another white girl to cry about the upper middle class experience. Now don’t get your hopes up, I’m still gonna do it, but I’ll do my best to keep some perspective. There are more important pieces to be written and more important voices to be heard and I’ll never replace them or try to; what I want to do is use the language I’ve had the privilege to develop, and acknowledge my main skill as an opportunity to challenge what needs to be challenged at my own scale. 

Now that I’ve proceeded to justify myself because clearly you had asked, and have realized I’m going to have to find another way to introduce myself than to offer my guests a cup of insecuritea (get it?), let’s move on - I’ve been meaning to talk about, well, me, you got me there - no but really, about my journey trying to put words on my mental health. Tl;dr: I haven’t yet. I’m starting to think the final boss of this game is financial independence so I’ll probably shelf it and go back to super hexagon for a decade or two. What could go wrong. 

It all started when i was still going to school in rollerskates and wearing orange tights to show how I had just discovered the sex pistols - in fact, it started long before, as the nice ladies at daycare told my parents that maybe I was a little more than just shy. The year after that, I was pulled out of school for being unable to stay in class during storytime: I had taken to crying uncontrollably and panicking into a near catatonic state at the thought of the old crone in charge reading fairy tales. I got sick in the morning. I was taken home and it fortunately coincided with my family moving to another village, where I started class the next year and appeared normal, if a little keen on the self-pity. My teacher suspected I was bored, but shit happens, and it didn’t show. I didn’t show.

I never showed. Later on I tried to show and disappear all at once, which was, you’ll see, a little suboptimal, but you do what you can, right. I went from year to year in constant fear and numbness, threats surrounding me in the classrooms, hallways, home, people. I felt injustice and it made me puke, and all that mattered was not being seen, not being seen for this reason at least. To everyone’s surprise, including mine, I had numerous friends, which made the loneliness thing all the more age-typical. Girl-typical. Good grades for a good girl, we never hear her. Now she’s too confident, we hear too much of her. Oh I too was bad at maths! You’re good at languages, where did you learn this? Why do you know that? Why do you talk like this? Look at her, she was ready to cry! We got you! 

Most of what I remember from school is the shame and inadequateness of feeling. I had a few questions: why was I obsessed with sex, how would boys like me, why did it feel better talking to adults even though I was ashamed to do so. At home, I was shamed for masturbating and at school I was just ashamed without anyone needing to make me that way. I don’t know where the trauma was, so don’t ask, okay? I know it’s gotta be in there but how can I tell what’s real and what’s a memory this abusive therapist planted for the sake of being right? 

My body felt like a traitor, always horny and always heavy and always numb. The swimming pool was a nightmare. My femininity was nowhere to be found. The delicate, cheerful way the others sang and hopped around made me grow old, I found myself revoltingly fat, I found my hair too short, and why didn’t I know how to dance? Why were people telling me I was so honest when all I did was be ashamed? Something wasn’t working out for me, and I was crying often. As soon as I pictured myself skipping and singing i couldn’t hold back my tears. I invoked this image of me as what I figured would be a normal little girl, and I felt a thousand years old, an antediluvian tree, its movements blocked and its curves absent. 

The body did things and I hid them. Through puberty i felt like an impure, sexless organism, like secondary sex characteristics implanted on a shape, a bunch of pubes on a round mistake. I didn’t know what makeup was for and my friend group had common enemies: lingerie, sluts, girly girls, because they could not be smart, they wore thongs and smoked and thereby lost the war of clever versus hot. Somewhere along the line we admitted to masturbating and that was the breakthrough, that’s that on that, and one day a girl choked another during recess. Around this time fat became an issue and everyone knew before I did, because it was normal and I overplayed normal. The limits were, and are, invisible to me.

The old school ended without a diagnosis, and I feared for my life since some older kids made a hobby out of telling us we were gonna get beat up as soon as we’d have set foot in the new school. I was scared, normal scared at first, and I shared the scared, which was something I thought I could get used to (unfortunately I did, and then it went away). I moved on and at first it all seemed to have worked out, I had kept some old friends around and even made new ones, I had a boyfriend for one month and we held hands before I told him I was a vampire (I had read a book by Anne Rice) and he no longer wanted to speak to me. I didn’t particularly mind. I found another (I didn’t want him and we tried to fit him inside me; it didn’t even feel like it would ever be a physiological possibility, he was a gentle friend, I was not receptive). I found another (it worked out and we dated for five years. I did manage to fit him inside me, and to this day i’m not certain I should have). Fat had become an issue. 

For the first year it didn’t show - well, not alarmingly so. I studied how to girl and promptly found out that caring about the body seemed an effective shortcut, and I did, very much. I was nerves and erogenous shame, a piglet in human cast, and anything that touched me sent thunderbolts of frustration through my entire bedroom; anyone that talked to me was taking me by surprise and met with confused torrents of whatever had to come out that day. At this point we called the food thing “being careful”: you didn’t want to gain weight so you were “being careful”, salad instead of a main course, no ice cream, careful. Look in the mirror, have you been careful enough? I have a very clear image of walking in on my mother weighing herself and telling me “you see, the biggest worry for moms is to have a flat tummy”. She denied it ever happened. Truth is, the last time she said it was three days ago. 

Then came the warnings and I had already learned to take them as compliments. Everytime someone told me I was eating too little, I was gaining points. I was about to graduate. I was about to evolve like a training pokémon; warnings were congratulations and fear was validating me as a fragile young girl, finally, finally, no longer a slug. You could say it was progressive, and throughout the whole thing I was taken care of, yet I slipped through everyone’s fingers because I had lost twelve kilos and weighed a remaining 36 (that’s 79 pounds). 

My grandmother was afraid of my hands and my body was drying out, dehydrating, too weak to menstruate or feel. During this time I have never fainted, but have pretended to numerous times. I still wasn’t the center of the world, so I considered it a failure. My mother’s friends said I needed to gain weight for men to love me, my mother said I needed to eat or people would keep staring, and everytime I bought diet coke my boyfriend gave me the look you give to a relapsing junkie, because it was the case. All other possibilities had been eliminated, by me. 

The abusive therapist was there all along, but then she was okay still. I saw her all the time, did all sorts of talking and then I saw a doctor and she measured my heart and threatened me with a hospital stay so I cleaned up my act. I was admitted once, in a special unit for teenagers, and it was a nightmare. The others were real and a girl lived there long term because her mother threw chairs in her face (she was the first one to come and introduce herself to me, smiling, complimenting my clothes, kind). One had lost her father and one didn’t like spinach. Before I could spend the night I had caved in and my parents collected me, and I collected the phone they thought was the problem. ED treatments: isolation won’t do shit, trust us. We get better because everyone else is less cruel than you were, and don’t say that’s the point. You lasted one hour before telling me my skirt was too short. 

At one point I told the abusive therapist I was going to get better, and I did. It had lasted about a year and the doctor said it hadn’t been real anorexia or I would have had it worse, and I thought, the nerve on this person that jumped on the occasion to invalidate me as soon as I ate one bite. Don’t you dare take the words from my experience, don’t be ridiculous, I’ve already claimed the words - I do realize how lucky I was, others died, I didn’t, but I was very ill indeed, your ego be damned. I was very ill, I was offered fashion advice and condescension and suggestions that I should stop or men wouldn’t look at me, and I was not medicated and I had my asshole pumped full of water because it had dried shut. My heart sounded like a ruffled biscuit wrapper and my first year of high school was a made-up arrangement for me to not completely float away: I would come to some classes for the sole purpose of keeping myself afloat and would repeat the year no matter what. I think this kept me alive. 

My first days of high school i was a mummy. I had taken to rubbing the skin off of my arms with a pumice stone until they oozed with pus and burned constantly, I wore bandages from my wrists to under my t-shirt sleeves, I don’t know how my legs supported me, I don’t know how anyone did. I had picked a special high school where half my classes would be in english but I’d know nobody: I lasted two days and was transferred to my local school, and there I appeared sporadically in french class, bonding with the delightful old man who gave it and thought my writing was “images”. He said I should do contests but maybe I wouldn’t win because “the best ones often don’t”.

I repeated the class and fell in love with the next french teacher, a gentle woman who taught us about the middle ages. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, mysterious, a woman but not just a mother, she didn’t know what to do with my writing and I’m ever so sorry she had to fence off the embarrassment and try to be a good role model. Lucky for me, she really wasn’t. 

Ultimately I got better. But I gotta say: my style during this era was off the charts. I looked amazing, I copied Amanda Palmer and my boyfriend and the mad hatter and David Bowie, I once went to high school with a suit and converse because of David Tennant, and I cut my own hair with kitchen scissors. My then-boyfriend painted my t-shirts with foetuses and whatever else we found extremely shocking. We said we’d lose our virginity to raw power by Iggy Pop (did we?) and his mother said she was afraid I would mentally screw her stable, balanced son whose anger issues had him slap me a bunch of times - I would have slapped me too, I said then, and almost stand by it. Years later he phoned me saying he was in therapy and he was sorry and it wasn’t my only fault; I don’t think i hold grudges and I’m glad others don’t either. My mother, however, does. Beyond unrealistic. Must be exhausting. 

If I had to describe what anorexia felt like, i’d say it felt like depression but floating, like compulsive obsessing over fashion because I felt I was allowed to now that I was thin; like the most hopeless cul-de-sac with no way out except the one you came from, a well full of serpents like you’re Ragnar Lothbrok and the british are laughing at you from the surface. You float yet sink and you have to claw your way up but your nails are like chalk, you know, from the not eating bit. The anxiety makes every day feel like a year of waiting in terror, and you don’t know why it came and you don’t know why it ends, and sometimes it doesn’t. 

...

I’ll have to return to the abusive therapist topic, which is why this is part one of a series on my experience of mental health issues. This isn’t meant as a self indulgent victimization (although it is self indulgent, I mean what the hell, i’m not catholic) though I don’t think it requires further justification, either. I don’t know what will come out of this once I said everything I had to say on the matter, but for now i’m angry about things, and I feel we need to do better. 

I was in the best possible conditions and my treatment still sucked, and I still spent the last fifteen years of my life in pain because health professionals can’t have an empirical, science-based approach for shit. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was a ping pong ball in a match doctors played with their dicks. Gender informed how easily my anorexia was diagnosed whereas countless young men still suffer in silence; it also informed how patronizing people would sound and how “efforts” were suggested as medication for my disorders. How pleasing men was supposed to be reason enough for me to eat my own illness. How my ‘’giftedness’’ was not investigated and neither was my ADHD because female-coded symptoms are overlooked. I’m pissed off, I’m qualified to be, and you’ll hear more of me. 

-Ju 

Exclusive Interview: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau & Tessa Virtue On Their New Project

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Tessa Virtue have teamed up to get girls more involved in sports. In this exclusive, they discuss the project as well as creating chemistry — on and off the ice.

January 30, 2019

They’re two of Canada’s most prominent and powerful women, and now Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Tessa Virtue are teaming up with the Canadian non-profit FitSpirit to promote physical activity for young women. About 50% of girls drop out of sports before they hit puberty, and they’re missing out on a lot more than just skinned knees and trophy ceremonies. In the emotionally fraught teenage years, athletic participation is linked to positive social connections, confidence, and self-esteem.

It’s a fitting cause for Virtue (who put Canada on the top of the podium twice at the 2018 winter Olympics) and Grégoire-Trudeau, (who loves to get outside with her husband, Justin Trudeau, and their three kids whenever she can). Refinery29 met the newly tight twosome for coffee to talk about the FitSpirit initiative, the gods and goddesses within us, and why tomgirls are the new tomboys.

You two are pretty much the ultimate Canadian female #friendshipgoals. How long have you known each other? How did you meet?

Tessa: We have mutual friends, so it felt like we’ve known each other for a long time. Like most Canadians, I have always thought of Sophie as being so relatable and approachable — she’s the best friend we want.

Sophie: Same to you! I loved Tessa before I met her. When we met, it was instant. I think we both come from the same place of curiosity when we meet people. I’m an only child, so I was raised to go up to people and say, “Hello, my name is Sophie. Would you like to play with me?” I still have that. I see the beauty in people. It doesn’t mean I’m naive, but I like to create connections.

Do you think people tend to equate openness and earnestness with naivety?

Sophie: I absolutely believe that. There’s a lot of BS going around. I’m sorry, but that’s what it is. I think when you create distance between yourself and other people it’s because you probably don’t know your true self. As women we’ve got to trust our guts and encourage young women to do the same.

Refinery29 caught up with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Tessa Virtue at a downtown Toronto café. PHOTO BY JENNA MARIE WAKANI

Can you talk a little bit about the link between sports and self-confidence?

Tessa: I think it’s so important in today’s landscape for females to feel like they’re equipped to cope with what life is puts at them — to have that confidence and sense of self worth. You watch young girls [when they’re starting out in sport] and they’re uninhibited and free. There’s this sense of being limitless, and then they get to a certain age and they start to be self-conscious. They feel judged, and they start to criticize and critique. I think how we manage that transition is critical, which is where an organization like FitSpirit can make a difference.

Sophie: Girls are struggling. If you look at the stats on anxiety, fear, depression, eating disorders — all types of emotional disorders. We can’t ignore the red flags. Physical activity is a break from the chaos of the mind. I like what you say about young girls feeling limitless. In a culture like ours, there are so many limitations: Limits on the kinds of relationships we entertain, the kinds of marriages, diets, cultural beliefs. I think physical activity is a way to rebel on what’s imposed. I feel free when I move, not just because my body moves freely, but free from the inside out.

Why do you think drop-out rates for girls in sports are so high?

Tessa: One thing you see with girls is they either excel and pursue sport seriously, or they try it recreationally and don’t find a place. There’s not as much middle ground. We want women to connect with physical activity on whatever scale works, whether that’s getting outside for a walk or trying a new dance class or joining a team and surrounding themselves with that network.

It seems like maybe casual athleticism is more baked into boy culture than girl culture.

Sophie: Yes. When I was first playing sports, I was quite intrepid and [that meant] becoming one of the boys — that’s who I had to prove myself to. It wasn’t until high school that I was on the girls’ volleyball team. That was so amazing: the bonding and the camaraderie between young women. I will definitely never use the word tomboy again. Maybe tomgirl? Let’s all be rebels together!

Speaking of gender roles. Sophie, you got a lot of attention when your son dressed as the female Paw Patrol dog a couple of years ago.

Sophie: He wanted to be Sky, who is all pink, and in that moment I thought, "Absolutely, my love. You can wear that." I don’t look at what people say on social media. I’m sure people had something to say. I treat everybody equally, regardless of gender. In a philosophical way, I think gods and goddesses change positions all the time [within us]. They’re in everyone.

Meaning we all have female and male spirits inside of us?

Sophie: Yes. We all carry it. I see it in the woman at the cash register right now, in friends, in colleagues. It’s in everyone.

I’ve gotta say — I wish we had more time to dig into this.

Sophie: I know. And I get emotional talking about this. It’s so important to know and respect our bodies. As women, we are taught to repress sexuality and our creativity as sexual beings. Men are not taught that in the same way. I think a young girl should feel comfortable. When we give sensuous freedom to young people as their bodies change, we allow them to express themselves more freely through sport — all of those things are connected.

Tessa: Women are taught to minimize the amount of space we take up, and through activity and sport you find your place and you take up your space. That is so ridiculously powerful.

Tessa, I read somewhere that you were Canada’s most Googled person this year.

Sophie: More than the prime minister?

Who?

Tessa: He was a close second, I’m sure. In terms of how it feels, there’s a bit of a dichotomy. I feel extremely grateful, and then there is the pressure where you feel like you have to make good. So it’s a privilege, but it is a weight.

Sophie: I totally agree. And if you start believing in the praise and the titles, you’re in trouble.

The entire world was desperate for Tessa and Scott to be a thing. Was that charming or annoying?

Tessa: Ha. It was understandable, and I’ve done that — I watch movies, I want the characters to be together. I think maybe what was missing from the conversation was the follow-up question: How have you built this partnership on respect over the last two decades? Isn’t it more impactful that it’s not romantic?

I see what you’re saying, but there were a lot of sparks flying on the rink. How do you create that kind of heat?

Tessa: We love performing together, getting into character, diving into the nuances and the movement. We worked hard to make people feel something. Those themes are universal: Romance, passion, jealousy, heartbreak…

Sophie: I want that with my husband.

You guys do pretty well in the sex vibes department. That picture in Vogue, for example.

Sophie: That is one picture over 16 years of marriage. My daily life is being the parent of three young kids with a husband in politics who is rarely at home. I’m lucky, I don’t struggle with money at the end of the month. There’s no role-playing here. It’s pretty much real life. I wish people could look behind the curtain and see. It’s probably not what they imagine.

I’m available if that’s an invitation.

Sophie: Ha ha.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

—Refinery29

Butch is Beautiful

The scope of LGBTQIA+ culture and identity is incredibly wide. People in all parts of our community have grown up in different parts of a wider cishet community and culture, bringing those experiences with them. This constant injection into our community means that it is as hard to nail down a unifying sense of Queer Fashion, as it is to nail down specifics for gender identity. There will people who identify the same, but present different aspects of that identity, and there will likewise always be people who never feel comfortable with any labels at all.

- K

Name: Ciara

Age: 23

Gender: They/Them

Sexuality: Lesbian

Location: Summer Hill

Occupation: Cashier, studying fitness

My sexual identity I guess I would say is lesbian, but my gender identity is… a bit more nebulous. In some capacity it has its roots in womanhood, just because being a woman, and being raised as a girl has been very important to me in how I experience the world, but beyond that, I don’t have any particular attachment to femininity. But being raised as a woman, and experiencing the world as a woman has been so instrumental to me becoming who I am, that to completely disregard it when talking about my gender identity would seem a little disingenuous.

I’ve always been very insistent that people realise and remember among all this discussion about gender to remember that women can be masculine, and that butch and masculine women do exist. I’ve held onto that as a part of my identity for a long time, because it felt I needed to prove that it could exist, and I guess I feel that I still do. I don’t want to disregard my womanhood, because it’s very important to me, but I dont feel any attachment to the physical markers of my womanhood. For example, I want top surgery at some point, I guess because when I was a kid I was very happy with my short hair and running around shirtless and enjoying the androgyny that came with being a child. I started going through puberty and freaked out about now having to be different. Like the entirety of being a teenager was just about trying to be okay with that? So I feel like I spent my teenage years feeling like a defective woman. I used to hate when people would think I was a boy, so I would try to be more performative in my femininity, but there was something that felt so completely unnatural about it. I got to my twenties, and realised that it wasn’t working for me, though since embracing my masculinity, and realising that I want to be read as a masculine person, I’ve then become more comfortable with putting on a bit more femininity, as long as I can be read as someone who isn’t traditionally feminine whilst doing so.

I don’t identify as nonbinary, for the same reason that I don’t, on a personal level, identify as queer. I think the pure range of things that Queer and Non-binary covers, doesn’t feel particularly accurate to me. I appreciate that for many people, the broad blanket statements of Queer and Non-binary feel very comfortable, but for me it feels a bit too open ended. I certainly identify strongly with transmasculinity, but I’ve seen and known people who identify themselves as “transmasculine lesbian,” which feels like a better fit, even though it sounds like an oxymoron at the same time, and “lesbian” has nothing to do with gender identity… I guess I’m still working it out a little bit, but everything changes over time, and I can only ever be true to myself y’know?

When I was a teenager I’d get crushes on both men and women, but there was something about the crushes that I got on women that was just so...physical… Like I’d get so nervous around them that I just couldn’t talk, and my hands would start shaking when I saw girls I had a crush on. I just interpreted that at the time as physical anxiety about not being out as bisexual to a lot of people, but retrospectively I’ve realised that all of my crushes on women have been like that, and none of my crushes on men. I identified as bisexual from about sixteen till nineteen, and then.. I just sort of stopped being attracted to boys. I realised sometime when I was twenty that I just wasn’t attracted to men anymore, so I tried referring to myself as a lesbian to see how that felt, and it just sorta stuck, And I never liked a boy again! *laughter*

When I first came out, I was intensely scared of being read as too masculine. I’d be wearing these horribly fitting t-shirts, with push-up bras underneath, and these incredibly tight jeans, like a butch/femme fusion in the most uncomfortable way possible. But I sort of moved towards more more masculine clothing to see if it felt more comfortable. And it did, it did. I started wearing a binder from time to time, and wearing mens clothes, and it felt so good to just not be uncomfortable with how things fit me, and how my body looked under clothes. But because I’ve always been quite butch looking, I’ve never really had any problems signifying to anyone in, or out of the community that theres something very queer here. As an assigned female at birth, but masculine presenting person, I’ve never had any problems standing out in the community. Sometimes people read me as nonbinary, or transmasculine, or just a butch woman, none of which I mind. For the most part I dont mind what people read me as, I used to hate being mistaken for a boy, but not so much anymore depending on context. Out and about on the street, being mistaken for a boy is fine, but being yelled at for trying to use the womens bathroom? Not so much. I think, as a queer person, I have a huge privilege of being palatably androgynous, when I know there’s this immense pressure for many nonbinary folks to present this way for their gender identity to be considered valid. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to be under that pressure, because it’s just how my body is.

For me the internet has been important for doing research and having resources. Be that looking up “do other people like me exist?” or researching tips and tricks on presentation. I think that before having this community at our fingertips, it would have been incredibly difficult to exist as a queer person. But I feel that for all that social media contributes to comparing yourself to people in an unhealthy way, I feel that things like Facebook and Instagram have been helpful for me the be able to document myself. It helps me manage dysphoria, and moments of not seeing myself clearly, or moments of insecurity; I feel that it helps to have a consistent log of images taken of myself two or three times a month. I like sharing with people how I look, because when you do go through a lot of physical changes, it feels good to keep people up to date with that. If you met someone three years ago, it’s nice to know that if they have you on facebook or whatever, they get to see what you look like as your perception of yourself changes, rather than having this outdated image in their brain. Go off, take photos of yourself kids, selfies everyday.

I feel that historically that LGBTQIA+ community has had to use these quiet signifiers to signal their sexuality to other people in the know, whilst flying under the radar. I think that there’s nothing really wrong with fitting into queer stereotypes. I fit into a lot o stereotypes about both butch lesbians, and nonbinary people. I think that the worst that can, and does come from it, is that people who don’t prescribe to those norms tend to feel a bit invisible, like femme lesbians have major gripes about people thinking I’m straight, and the only time people think that about me is when they think I’m a straight boy, so I cant imagine how bad that is. It becomes bad when we assume that these stereotypes are the norm for the whole community, but I think that if people want to signify their gender or sexuality in these ways, then theres nothing wrong with that. As long as we don’t expect people to abide by these stereotypes, I think there is zero problem with them.

I feel like the mainstream media needs to catch up in terms of queer fashion. Theres a massive disconnect between what you see on tv, and in movies, vs what you see in person at a queer event, where everyone’s dressed… I cant even begin to describe how fashion it is. I went to an event over the weekend where everyone was dressed in just weird shit, which is actual queer culture, and queer fashion. It is important to recognise that queer fashion doesn’t actually exist. Because the culture is as wide and varied as there is in the broader mainstream community, that any attempt to capture an idea of queer fashion will alienate most of the community entirely.

full gallery on facebook

follow us on instagram

please contact us if you’d like to be involved

So apparently Reddit noticed me

I don’t know how to verify my identity there, so here’s some comments:

I’m not trans, and I don’t look even mildly androgynous.  I look like the American Girl doll Molly and I was dressed that day like I had come from the prairie.  I was also wearing the backpack I’ve had since college.  I’m also four foot nine.

Those of you cheerfully giving advice on how to look 16 instead of 12: I’ve literally aged three years since this post originally went up, but people continued to think I was 12 until I cut all of my hair off.  People have indeed started thinking I am 16 instead.  I regret everything.

I did in fact hit puberty and in fact have all the appropriate proportions for my height, but the height is just...too much for adults to comprehend sometimes, especially when combined with my questionable fashion choices, which are 90% thrift store and 10% Target clearance racks.

I do also have a very young-looking face.  People have been thinking I was a child for quite some time now.  I filled elderly people at a hospital with consternation when I worked there.  People who came to my various McDonald’s would occasionally question whether I was of legal working age.  Then again, they also questioned whether I was Amish or not, so that should tell you part of why these misunderstandings keep happening.

I once dated a guy with a massive beard who looked way older than me.  People used to give us dirty looks in public.  I don’t miss that.

Sometimes I don’t get carded at all, but my best friends also look like high schoolers so when we all go out together we’re usually all assumed to be 19 or 20.  My husband has Perpetual 5 O’Clock Shadow so he ages us out of middle school at least.  One of these friends was with me in the airport that day, so us both being together probably exacerbated the problem.

The person who said people like me are part-hamster: I love you.  This is the most ridiculous explanation I’ve ever heard.

To the person who said I probably looked like Ariana Grande in a sweatshirt and leggings, I love you.  You can stay.  You’re wrong but you can stay.

I have definitely been given a kids menu on a date before.  It’s...not great.

You don’t understand how much I want blue hair.  I have been working at jobs where blue hair was not allowed since I was 16.  I am now 28.  I am contemplating quitting my job in the next few years to Become a Parent and you can bet your butt I’m going to dye my entire hair blue the second that happens.  Snapchat just came out with a colorful hair lens and I send my husband pictures of me with “blue hair” all the time.

I don’t have any genetic form of dwarfism, just super-small parents.

I’m a white person.  Not so white that the sun burns me whenever I see it, but definitely way more Italian/Sicilian blood than anything else in me.  So you can’t blame the TSA agent’s assumption on my race.

...if y’all were trying to imply that I have at any point conjured this young-looking image in order to gain attention from older men who are into children...y’all are gross.  No one who has talked to me for more than fifteen minutes has thought I was a child.

I was not wearing makeup that day at all

I did not make this up.  How dare you.  I was just trying to share a cute story about a lovely TSA lady and y’all are trying to tell me my life is fake.

Pssst I’m not heterosexual but that has nothing to do with what I look like.

To the person who was sad there wasn’t a picture but then said “hmm maybe that would be a bad idea considering this is the internet”; I love you.  I have gotten enough weird sex messages without there being pictures of me online.  I’m tired of blocking people.

Y’all are saying I’m going to enjoy this more when I’m in my 30′s or 50′s or whatever.  You’re wrong.  I’m going to enjoy this most when I get pregnant and I still look like a teenager and I can offend every single person I see who doesn’t know me just by my existence.

I do buy children’s shoes, and also children’s workout gear, but by and large the current children’s fashions are not for me.

I don’t take advantage of children’s prices at museums, etc. but I was once in Europe on a trip with super religious people.  The only time I have EVER seen them lie to get ahead was repeatedly lying about my age to get cheaper tickets.

Okay y’all who are doubling down on me being a liar: I don’t airport much, but I can tell you that the lady was already giving me instructions about what was coming up as she was holding my information but before looking at it, because apparently I looked like a scared rabbit or something.  Then she looked at it and realized her mistake.  Then I unzipped my shoes (...I’m not helping myself here am I) and went through the whole put your stuff in a bin and walk through a metal detector thing.

Any other questions??  Doubts??  Theories??  I’m here to answer things but I just don’t know how to Reddit.

First blog

Hey there.  As the title says, this is my first blog!  

I’ve got to be honest, I am pretty scared doing this but I am hoping that I can overcome that and use this platform to express feelings and topics I want to write about :).  

I don’t mind if anyone ever reads this, to be honest this is just for me.  So, lets start! 

A little bit of the basic stuff about me - 

I’m 29 and live in London, UK.  I’m married and have a doggo, I have a decent job.  Seem’s like a pretty average, nice life. 

Here’s the thing (and the reason I wanted to start this blog), I have depression and have problems with anxiety.  Usually, like 80% of the time I’m pretty much okay, or at least I sort of just muddle through the every day. 

A bit of a background on my “journey with depression and anxiety” - As a young child, I was painfully shy around others.  I was always nervous to make friends by myself, I’d usually wait for people to speak to me first.  Of course, growing up I had plenty of friends though!  I was always scared to go anywhere by myself, I clung to my parents quite a bit.  Even at a young age, of about 3 or 4 I would make up excuses to try get out of situations that frightened me. 

As I got older, I did gain some confidence but I was still pretty quiet.  Especially when it came to something I felt ZERO confidence in, such as maths classes (I suck at maths haha).  I could never quite understand what it was I was missing, or why I didn’t understand what was being explained in class.  Moving on, PUBERTY!  Puberty hit me early on, in primary school in fact.  I started to develop way earlier than my friends.  I did for the most part ignore it, thinking my friends will catch up and we’ll be the same eventually.  Secondary school started and I think this is when the issue with my body started to come in to play.  My friends all grew and stayed slim.  I stayed the same height from early on in my teens.  My boobs were bigger than my friends and I hated that I had a much bigger chest than everyone else.  I looked at myself as short and podgy and so began the comparison of myself to others.  I had braces for a large chunk of my teens too - this is also made me very wary of my appearance. 

Looking back, I was very slim as a teen and I weighed only about 7 and a half stone, but I thought I was fat/chubby.  There was a point when I was hanging around with some girls who were pretty cruel to not only myself but to my other friends too.  They made me feel ugly.  I get why they did it - they were deeply insecure themselves.  Teenagers are, I’ve not met a teen in my whole life who isn’t insecure about something!  Its normal, I guess? 

The older I got, I started to doubt myself and due to that I let myself fail in a number of areas, one being school.  I let boys affect my mood and I allowed myself to base my whole being off of them and how they made me feel, whether it be happy or sad (mainly the latter).  I as cruelly compared to other young girls and told I was second best etc.  What a thing to tell anyone, but looking back again it was coming from another teenager who definitely did not know the severity of their words.  Words that I would carry on with me even to this day. 

I met my future husband at quite a young age (still a teen though) - 17 years old.  He helped marginally with my confidence, but at the same time could knock it all away with a click of his fingers.  I wanted to be perfect for him, I wanted to be number 1.  Because of all the self doubt I had about myself, I struggled to see that I was number 1 to him.  Not to say that me and my husband haven’t had bad times and that he is perfect.  Far from it, but I’ll explain more on that shortly. 

In to my 20′s now and I started to slowly put on weight, I had fallen out with a lot of my school friends.  I was becoming isolated and pretty miserable.  At 20 I went to uni.  The next 4 years at uni were hard, extremely hard.  I felt guilty for going to to uni - my husband had his own insecurities about me going to uni (bear in mind I didn’t move away for uni and in fact lived only 20 minutes away).  I struggled to feel worthy at uni.  I compared myself to others, everyone was so much smarter than I was.  They always knew what to say and they had good grades etc... so I started to despise others in my classes and my anxiety started to sky rocket.  I was also working part time whilst studying too, which added on extra pressure.  I would come home from either uni or work and lock myself in the bathroom (despite usually being home alone) and I would cry.  Sob in fact.  I would start to contemplate suicide then - always the thought of hanging myself.  The self harming would start then too, but I thought I was always pretty smart about it.  I wanted to continue to seem to everyone else that I was okay, so I would hit myself... bruise the top of my legs, pinch myself and dig my nails in.  I never wanted anything permanent as I never wanted to anyone to find out my secret.  My husband found out though.  (we still wasn’t married at this time, e was living together though).  He didn’t fully understand, I’m not sure if he still does.  He has listened to me crying over the years and tried to help, but at the same time he has also made it worse.  Our arguments have been pretty bad over the years and usually would be to do with our equally low self-esteem. 

I have never felt good enough for him.  When we first got together, I was already pretty insecure as I said before and there was another young girl who my future husband at the time as still interested in/had feelings for.  This girl, although I’m not sure if she ever knew was the basis for A LOT of our horrible arguments in our late teens and early 20′s.  Because of this we have both become horribly insecure about each of us having friends of the opposite sex, or even friends who could be “influential” to us.  Anyway, I have never felt good enough for him... he has left me quite a few times, especially in the recent years (once this year) and yes I do understand it’s been because of his insecurities too but I really am not sure if he knows the impact this has had on me. 

2019 has been one hell of a rough year.  My grandmother has dementia and lives in a care home, my brother is currently under going treatment for cancer.  I feel pretty miserable in my job and I was in a car crash in the summer too.  I don’t have any close friends anymore, so I find it hard to talk to anyone. In the last recent weeks I have felt at my lowest and I have attempted/contemplated suicide twice.  I have been neglecting my anti-depressants and I have had panic attacks. 

My depression not only affects me mentally, but physically too.  I over-eat, meaning that slow weight gain has most certainly caught up over the years.  I struggle to be motivated/go out to places.  I am always so tired, I could actually sleep for days on end if I as allowed.  I have multiple knots and tension in my shoulder and I have actually been signed off work for stress this week.  But I am using this week to change how I am feeling.  To take the time for me and to heal these wounds.  Of course it is going to take longer than this week, but I am hoping to kick-start it this week and really take the time to focus on ME.  

I am going to be writing more posts of what I have tried and going to be trying for the rest of this week and any tips I have found helpful in the past.  

And maybe some more just about me :). 

Thanks!! 

LunaMoonPrism

More of my bistory... (bi-story?)

So... why now?

(This took a long time to finish, a lot of days coming back to it to add or reframe something. If you think that someone could benefit, please share this with them.)

I’m ok with not getting the clue until now, late bloomer (flower out of season or obit for old fashioned underwear? you decide) and all. But why did it take this long to figure it out? Part of it was the culture I grew up in, and part of it is that I was so attracted to the opposite sex that I didn’t have the bandwidth to notice guys.

When I was a little kid, like kindergarten age, I had two really good friends, we’ll call them Jack and Jill. Jack was my friend that I hung out with all the time, and had sleepovers with, but I crushed hard on Jill. I didn’t save points from some ridiculous school fundraiser to buy a pretty necklace for Jack... but I did for Jill.

There was one playing doctor episode with another boy, which has always creeped me out when I think about it. I don’t know where he got the idea, was it his invention or something taught to him? I made a point of not staying in contact with him... and he wouldn’t have been my type, regardless. Creepy.

Middle school, no guy crushes, piles of girl crushes, nothing interesting so let’s skip ahead. High school, still all girl crushes, all girlfriends, probably 95% straight wet dreams, started a collection of porn mags, all very straight... except for the bisexual section of Penthouse Letters. I mean, I paid for it, I’m gonna read every damn page looking for something to give me an excuse to jack off over. Most followed a trope of being at an orgy or couples swap and finding a dick conveniently in mouth’s reach to suck, that it was fun, writer might do it again, no big deal.

So it wasn’t that I didn’t know it was an option, but in the throes of the gonadal madness called puberty, Amok Time... the light coming from girls and women was a supernova, but from other boys and men, just a candle. This moth was heading towards the brighter of the two.

College, not much changed. The signal from WOMN-FM was 100k watts and five by five. The KOCK station was barely 50 watts and was on the other side of the Mississippi. A bit of that broadcast might sneak through on a clear night and remind my brain to sneak a guy into a sex dream.

Some guy friends were a bit more interesting than others. But nothing overpowered my interest in women, especially when I was in a relationship with one. Boobs are fucking hypnotic when you have permission to play with them! And when you don’t, the key to not being hypnotized by them is to not stare. Don’t make eye contact with the breasts, make eye contact with the person.

Grad school... A couple guys were a bit more than interesting, but that was it. I got married, and my world was focused on Her. Its not like I didn’t find other people attractive, I found some of my classmates to be incredibly attractive, one coworker was a bombshell and a half, but I never felt drawn to cheat. Instead, I had a lot of a really good friends. (This is also when I am pretty sure a couple was feeling me out for a threesome.)

Damn, but grad school is stressful. Thankfully, we found good doctors that worked with both of us to find medications that helped us cope with the mental illnesses that grad school brought to the fore. Depression. Anxiety. For me, my PTSD had put me in a constant state of hypervigilance, caused me to freeze and withdraw when my brain responded to anything it considered a threat, neglecting my research duties, my responsibilities as a spouse and partner, and broke my sleep up with waking from nightmares where I was being physically attacked by throwing kicks and punches before I was fully aware that I was safe, it had been a dream, and that isn’t a good thing when you are sleeping next to someone.

Clonazepam helped a hell of a lot with sleep disturbances, but it wiped out most of my memories of dreams. I happily exchanged both nightmares and sexy dreams for pleasant and restful sleep. But every now and then, one slipped in. Some were sexy and fun, some were horrible, but they were both rare.

Without medication and therapy, I wouldn’t have finished my PhD. I would probably be divorced and remarried (probably several times, like most of my siblings. My whole family needs help, but most won’t seek it out. I’ve tried to encourage them to do so... You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it stay in the kitchen. (That was a joke. Sorry.)

And I definitely don’t think I would be in as good of a place as I am now to deal with this change so easily and healthfully. Bi people have higher rates of mental illness than lesbian or gay people, so I was ahead of the curve. I was already diagnosed and receiving treatment, and I had learned a lot of ways to control intrusive thoughts, whether they were self abuse... or just homoerotic. Now I don’t have to push the homoerotic ones aside. I can choose to set them aside if they are inappropriate, or just smile to myself.

Graduation, a couple “real” jobs, some world travel, and a trend starts to show up in my sex dreams, sometimes wet, sometimes just sexy. Some were a bit kinky, most were straight, but a lot of them included me sucking cock. How is that straight? Most of the time, I was sucking my own dick (which, as a teenager, I had already determined was impossible for me). That was fun and it felt good to do to myself what had only been done to me. Other times, I was sucking someone else’s dick. That was very hot, too. That felt really good, too.

This is when I had some of my first really strong guy crushes. We would be hanging out, and if we were alone, I’d want to make out with them, or push them back in a chair to go down on them. WTF, brain?

🧠 What the heart wants, the heart wants.

❤️ Don’t blame me, jackass, I’m just here to pump some iron (rich blood)!

A couple of these crushes were on openly gay men, so potential openness probably played a part to my attraction, and that was probably why I had such intense feelings for them. I would just want to kiss them, fool around a bit, see what happened. I basically told my brain to shut it, and moved on.

🧠 You should listen to me. I know you. I have your best interests at heart.

Bullshit. If you had our best interests at heart, you wouldn’t torment me over things that happened 30 years ago.

❤️ Don’t bring me into this! I have one job, and that is pumping! CARDIO, BABY! WOOOOOO!

I also deconverted, realized that I no longer believed in a god or anything supernatural, so I have no reason to think these lusty thoughts are shameful. My wedding vows were always to Her, and still are. It was important to me then that we were married in a church. Now, that is just a detail in the most wonderful days of my life.

If you are thinking of leaving religion or already have, the Recovering from Religion group can help you deal with any trauma you experienced in religion, fears or guilt from the religion you have left, being shunned, or are facing social pressure from your friends. You can find them on the Recovering from Religion website, social media, or by phone (1-844-368-2848, which is, clever them, 1-8-I-DOUBT-IT).

If I had the same feelings about a woman or NB person, I would have told my brain to shut up, I’d get back to that later, and it went into the spank bank. The guy crushes were just suppressed, and they found their expression in my dreams. but now, I recognize that this is a valid and real part of my life.

There are a lot of things I want to try, but I don’t know that I need to try them. If it becomes a need, we will need to reevaluate our boundaries. We have a different relationship now compared to what we had a year ago, ten years ago, or even twenty. This year has already brought a big change in who I am, and this year will probably include some more changes. Ten years from now, I don’t know what our relationship will look like... but I want to be with Her, because She has helped me grow so much already. When you have something this good...

The simple answer to “Why now?” is I don’t really know. I just really preferred women that I didn’t notice that I liked guys, and when I had those feelings, I treated them like an unwanted, intrusive thought. It took me this long to figure it out because it took me this long.

Is a puddle designed to fit into a pothole, or does it simply flow to fit the hole that it is in? (apologies to the late Douglas Adams) Pretty clearly, it fits the hole. My life may have had the shape of a bisexual man all along, but I just didn’t notice it.

I’m happy to be bisexual now, instead of in high school, where I would have been bullied even more than I already was. If I had realized this in high school, I would have survived and found my way.

College would have been similarly difficult. College, I would have had friends that would have supported me.

Grad school was enough all on its own. But now, I can do this. I can be me. Grad school... Fuck grad school. If I could handle that, I can handle damn near anything. I would have been ok. A bit more bruised, maybe, but I’m here now, and its because I always believed that this could get better.

And it did.

I’m in a very good place.

I’m Bisexual today.

I was Bisexual then, even if I didn’t know it.

I’ll be Bisexual tomorrow.