Any chance you'd expand on the hank hill trans guy post? (Sorry, best indicator I could come up with.) The concept interests me as I decidedly know my maleness, yet don't feel impeded by for the most part, any male gendered norms/boxes. I am fairly masculine, though I rarely use those kinds terms to describe myself. I have found I often do stray outside of what society pushed for me when I transitioned, yet I again do not feel it has taken from my right to maleness whatsoever. I am just me, who happens to be male. I have had friends try and suggest I am NB adjacent but I do not feel this way whatsoever. I feel more people are outliers to gender expectation than we care to admit and it's disappointing the way cis-people deny that. Hope this wasn't too long winded, I value your writing and perspective, and wanted to hear more of your thoughts on this.

Yeah, well so many things all get conflated by gender labels, and it's all so personal, you know? Masculinity does not have to mean maleness, and a person's gender identity might be a reflection of some innate quality they experience themselves as having, or a general summary of their tendencies, or their desired presentation, or their sense of affinity with other people, or an interpersonal tool, or something they just go along with because it was given to them by society, or any other number of things.

I think my recent substack piece on detransition goes into this pretty well, and I have an upcoming piece of what @pastimperfection calls "bilateral dysphoria" that comes out next week that delves into it too.

I think I mostly saw taking on a male identity as a means to an end more than any kind of innate reflection of who I was, though I did feel an affinity with effeminate men for a lot of reasons. I think I also discounted how much I have in common with my fellow nonbinary people of all stripes, because that identity became so strongly associated with being an annoying type of queer person that everybody else just wrote off as ultimately being their assigned gender at birth anyway no matter how much they protested. it doesn't help that 'nonbinary' is a catchall term for literally thousands if not millions of very distinct experiences and desires.

transitioning gave me control over how i was perceived, finally, but hormones are a throttle that only go in one very specific direction, and you don't really have all that much control over which changes kick in at which times and what people will make of you once you do start registering to them as some identity other than what you were first saddled with. it's an incredible gift to be able to toggle that throttle. but it's limited, not because medical transition isn't incredible and needed for so many, but because there is no escaping the goddamned binary cissexist logic that influences everything about how people treat you, how you navigate institutions, who finds you desirable and what they want out of you, and so much else.

if you're able to cast a lot of the external societal bullshit aside and feel strong in your maleness, maybe you're stronger than me or maybe our orientation to these things is just different, i don't know. i was never all that sensitive to feedback that i was doing the whole being-a-woman-thing all that wrong. i reveled in violating those rules to an extent. succeeding at being a woman despite my best attempts was what felt super dysphoric. and now i guess im succeeding at being a man, insofar as im always read as one, and it feels just as uncomfortable and objectifying and false. i thought that with manhood i could probably just grit my teeth and deal with it, but i'm finding that i can't.

ive always been very open that for me, gender is a thing I Do, and i guess to those who know me well it wouldnt be surprising to hear that i have gotten tired of Doing Being a Man and dont feel like playing that particular gendered game anymore. I tend to get bored of things! and find the flaws in things. and find my comfort in being fault-finding and contrarian and not being a joiner. and thats okay. i learned a lot along the way. not having to try any more is a huge relief. i can just do whatever. and know actively that people will more often than not be wrong in what they make of me.

maybe it was natural feeling for you to decidely 'know' your maleness without a care for masculine standards because that is the right identity for you! and maybe i only feel secure in the "not knowing" realm and in letting go of what people think of me or finding any kind of tidy categorization for it because that's the right spot for me. for now. until i find a new interesting way to be unhappy and striving for more and different again. :) that's just part of being alive, for me.

its the Good Kush she got it at the dollar store :3

act 3 is so overwhelming 😩 i am kind of lost in which order to do stuff since there are always timed quests that fail after some amount of long rests 🥲

Sometimes I look outside my scope of mutuals and I'm like.....I'm glad I'm not them (whole essay in the tags)

The best feeling in the world is when there’s a piece of media you know you love and you’ve hyped it up as your favorite thing for so long but you haven’t revisited it in a while so you start to worry if it’s really as good as you make it out to be and so you go back and revisit it and it’s like. Oh this is even better than I remembered this shit rules

is it normal to disassociate and have a breakdown over the fact that I am not a hunter in Yharnam as soon as I stopped playing Bloodborne for the first time...

okay so. obviously i miss the store management aspect of the style savvy series, but this game is not style savvy and i wasn’t expecting it to be!! that aside i am having so much fun the gameplay loop is still just as addictive (creating outfits for other people based off of their requests) and the only thing that really is different from style savvy is the lack of management + a storyline. the game looks so good too like everything is sooooo cute and pretty and i am so beyond happy

its fun* playin bloodborne and connecting it to a dream i had that i was playing bloodborne (without knowing hardly anything about it) and seeing the similarities

*playing bloodborne is otherwise very unfun

im playing the game on god mode because i want to have fun! (it took me a full year to concede that i wasnt very good at the game and i wasnt progressing at all and it routinely brought me to frustrated tears)

The 5 stages of having no phone:

Silly whimsy fun of annoying everyone in the vicinity by making it known that you have a broken phone.

Deflate upon realizing the harsh reality that IT'S THE THIRD TIME YOUR PHONE HAS BEEN BROKEN IN A SINGLE YEAR.

Anger. Time to play Hades after so many months to kill monsters to take your anger on. Realize that your last game was in the middle of an ongoing run you have no idea what to do on now.

Ouch, my hands hurting. Win the run by sheer muscle memory and luck. Do another run. Ouch, hands hurting even more. (Keyboard and mouse curse).

Eat chips that's been expired since September 27.

:-p animal crossing is making me wanna draw nice things

.... I feel bad bc my friend is sad ) :

sometimes i see people playing minecraft pocket edition with the crouch button in the middle of the walking buttons and the jump button off on the right and i get so confused because i havent changed my minecraft pe settings in years. like i was playing pocket edition since before we had a crouch button so ive never played with the crouch in the middle since i got used to having the jump button there

40 mil is the highest points i've had for gw ever tbh so i am proud of myself so far <3 also !! almost rank 175 >;D

anyways hi just small update/rambles uhm. i've been more productive w school but also school ew !!! and 6.3 is so fucking soon holy shit i am not ready at all & i hope this week i can finally start omori and/or p4g <33

thinking about ✨him✨

here we go again~!