“There is a terrible strength in knowing what you want and having no
doubts.”
I mean, i know Marco was talkin about morphing a shark brain, but… just gonna unpack that later.

but you ARE home.

It’s so quiet. I both love it and hate it at the same time. I don’t like noise and hustle, but… it’s lonesome, now. I don’t wanna feel my feelings, I wanna be distracted from them!
damnable Feelings. I miss everyone.
so far away…
sniffle. wellington is far enough, why’s everyone gotta leave?



well we’ll roll the old chariot along…

oh hey, it’s Sunday! oops, i’m late again. People? still there?

I’m using this as a draft to post to facebook. (I hate the new wordpress update and its stupid little halpful! options! box that always appears over what I’ve typed, and its stupid paragraph boxes, maybe I should’ve used microsoft word instead. too late, y’all get to read my ramble.)

alright. I know there’s probably Christians here who’ve been misinformed about the ‘end conversion therapy’ bill. Before you vote on it, please read my testimony of the harm ‘conversion therapy’ has done me, and what this bill is actually about. For years, I’ve deliberately kept this page devoid of personal information, in fear that my mother would somehow find something more to shame me for, but… this is important. (obviously, if you’re friends with her, don’t harm her by showing her this please?)
so first I’ll clear up some misconceptions about this bill.
the only people this bill may possibly criminalize are doctors who consistently mutilate babies who have genitalia that don’t look “normal” at birth – about 2% of the world’s population are born intersex (you might be more familiar with the word ‘hermaphrodite’ than with the word ‘intersex’, but ‘hermaphrodite’ is used for animals these days, rather than humans), and many intersex people don’t even know they were born intersex – because a doctor mutilated their genitals at birth, most times without even telling their parents. fun fact! there’s a small chance you were born intersex, and even your parents don’t know 😀 So anyway that’s the only criminalization that’ll happen at birth; the doctors who take knives to healthy babies’ genitalia would be criminalized there, not the parents. (I mean, I guess if you’re a parent who decides to take a knife to your newborns’ genitals cause they don’t look like they fit a binary system, you’d probably get fined or something? maybe prison for manslaughter if the baby dies? don’t try to do plastic surgery if you’re not a surgeon, and if you can’t accept an intersex kid as perfectly healthy then DON’T HAVE KIDS, or adopt them out to someone who will love your babbies as they are, whatever.)

Hormone blockers for trans people are an entirely different thing That can get prescribed at 15 years old, just before puberty hits. All hormone blockers do is put off puberty for a few years, basically it just extends their time to choose what they want. Some teens might get blockers, decide they’re not trans after all, and then they come off the blockers and proceed with puberty as any other cis kid would. hormone *treatment* is different. Obviously, they’re not going to be given the hormones testosterone or oestrogen until they’re legally adults and are able to decide that for themselves, at which time their parents… don’t legally have a say anyway. Honestly, I’m cis and puberty hit me at a really inconvenient time of my life so I’d have loved some blockers just to put off having my period for a year!

Also I should explain terminology – trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. trans/transgender applies to anyone whose genitals don’t correspond with their brain. Cis/cisgender applies to anyone whose genitals match their brain.

again, this bill won’t criminalize parents “who won’t give their kids hormone treatment and surgery”. hormone treatment and surgery are NOT FOR KIDS. This bill will criminalize doctors who don’t give them all the information and options that they are entitled to. I mean… surgery?! a lot of trans folks I know don’t have surgery, would rather spend their money on a house (surgery is expensive btw), and they don’t make the hormones/surgery decision until they’re adults anyway, so… uhh… the only way a parent would be criminalized would be if they were to literally lock their ADULT offspring in a room to stop them from going to get hormone treatment. they’d be under a charge of abduction in that case, which has nothing to do with this bill. This talk of ‘children forced to have hormones and surgery’ is misinformed nonsense, and I’m sorry people’ve been mislead here.

*deep breath* okay. let’s do this. here’s my testimony.
when I first realized I was gay, I was 19. First year uni. late, I know, but denial was my favourite defense mechanism while growing up in a conservative Christian school. I truly believed I was broken, I was ashamed, I didn’t tell hardly anyone, and full of harmful self-loathing I went to a registered psychologist and asked her to fix me. let me be clear, I am NOT talking about a ‘conversion therapist’ here. The very first person I saw was a registered psychologist. She told me “I’m sorry, I can’t wave a magic wand and make emotions disappear. I can help you work through them though. And your thoughts and behaviour can impact your emotions, and those are easier to change, so let’s examine those as well.” This was actually helpful to me – it was stuff I’d been learning in first year Psych, so it made some sense, and it was good for me to talk to someone, and not to bottle things up. we also had the classic Psych debate of nature vs nurture or both, which was less helpful but nonetheless interesting.

Fastforward a year. Dunedin university. I met a visiting dudebro pastor from Nelson who claimed he could ‘fix’ me. I gave him $200 per hour, to hear him tell me that ‘well it’s just like cat or dog people – if you spend more time with dogs, you’ll become a dog person’. So I took his advice and hung out with more guys. The ones I did have honest vulnerable friendships with, we connected on similarites (ironically enough, one of the similarities was ‘liking girls’, seeing as that was on my mind). Didn’t make me more attracted to guys. The ones I didn’t have much in common with…. were friendships that I never managed to cultivate, let alone develop romantic feelings towards. I was also told to ‘stay away from pretty girls you might be attracted to’, which was… anyone I shared an emotional connection with, honestly I was a little offended at the implication I was shallow. So that shot good friendships with all females for awhile. Fear of falling in love with your friends and being told that would be the Worst. Thing. Ever! kinda puts a dampner on forming friendships. The other thing dudebro told me was “girls often practice flirting with their fathers growing up, maybe you should try that” which was just CREEPY and WRONG and freudian (Freud was debunked decades ago, WHY do we still know his name and theories? why are people still teaching his lies?!) and I’m glad I wasn’t stupid enough to take him at his word that time.

See, thing is. none of these ‘conversion therapists’ are actual psychologists or therapists. They have absolutely no training. They do no research. Not even the most conservative christians call anything they do ‘science’. Dudebro didn’t have a clue how the human brain works. He thought he could ‘pray the gay away’, against all statistical evidence that, well, that’s never worked. God made me this way, and His work is good – why should He change it for you? Do you know how literally unhealthy it is for a human brain to live in shame and fear of what you are? (if you don’t, please read Brene Brown’s books on her research into shame and vulnerability.) Shame takes years off your life. Do you know what it’s like to try, and fail, to be straight, and to have that shame compounded with every visit to someone who’s meant to be helping you? He even supported rape culture because “Haha! guys can’t resist temptation, y’know!” (I will ALWAYS be angry at anyone who can spread this lie. I can stop myself from raping people, so why can’t guys?)
…and I, in my ignorance, voluntarily PAID him to inflict psychological damage to my brain. I was young and naive and I have not yet healed. One day I hope to heal. I know that this damage to peoples’ brains is unseen and unreported, due to the lack of physical visible scars. This does not make that damage any less real. Perhaps someday general society will recognize ‘conversion therapy’ as torture. This country has not even banned physical ‘conversions’ of electrocuting people ‘to turn them straight’, let alone psychological torture. Perhaps someday we will have the technology to scan a brain and say ‘oh, look there, psychological damage.’ We do not have this tech yet, but people like him should still be locked up. I know he won’t be, that’s not what this bill does, but at least perhaps if this bill goes through, he won’t be able to inflict damage on others. That is why I am publicly testifying now. To stop this violence towards my queer whanau. Do you know how many of us DIE every year due to people like him?

very un-fun fact: Did you know 47% of trans people attempt suicide? However, if they’re placed in a community which respects them and uses the pronouns they choose, that rate drops to 10%. This bill will not force anyone to respect trans people’s pronouns. That is not mentioned. This bill is only to stop people literally giving others money to torture them in the name of ‘conversion therapy’.
If this bill goes through, it will save lives. Please. I’m begging you to help it go through, to support the people I love, those who are being persecuted by society while some who claim to follow Christ throw stones.

Me: *grin* “low-key judging you for that.”
her: *curiously* “why?”
me, thoughtfully: “…huh. I don’t actually know.”

Maybe because I used to think girls who wore a lot of makeup, took ages on their appearance were vain, shallow, were going to judge me for not… “you could look really pretty if you tried”, someone said to me once. didn’t help that I associated all of that with the ‘cool group’ who lowkey bullied me in highschool, judged me for not giving a crap about what i wore. (why should I care about what I look like? my personality is way more important.) Mix that with the… pity. I felt later upon realizing there are those who need makeup to feel self-confident. was that pity tinged with contempt? did I think that I was better than them?
*do I still think that now?*

as I’ve grown up I’ve come to realize it’s not their fault.
it’s society does this to us, makes us hate our own bodies. I was one of the lucky ones; I never got that self-body-loathing. Perhaps I managed to escape the crushing body-shaming because I was homeschooled, and wasn’t allowed to watch TV.

quote Banksy, on advertizing:
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from busses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

I am possibly the most vain… no. most self-confident woman I know, when it comes to what I look like; I know i’m objectively perfectly proportioned, and that by today’s standards (insert rant on how fickle *those* are, in the 60s it was women with curves who were sex icons, not skin-and-bones sticks like me) I am pretty, and hot, and cute, and attractive. Perhaps it’s easier to say “personality should be more important than looks” when people look at you with jealousy and say things like “you can wear hobo clothes and pull it off, you still look cute”. (seriously, I could wear a potato sack and make it look good. my fashion choice is “Deliberately Apathetic/homeless chic”.)

society tells us that pretty people are worth more, and to be pretty you need to buy all this consumerism “because you’re worth it”. And I’ve always hated peer pressure, so I’ve always responded with “hard no, screw you all with a cactus, I’m worth more. I’m already pretty and even if I weren’t WHY’S IT MATTER.”

…you dress up for dancing comps though.
…true. I mean, performing, to win a prize from a particular society, I suppose. yeah. literally there for someone else’s entertainment.
…I absolutely refuse to wear makeup though! it feels awful and it makes me look different, not necessarily better.
…that’s cool, good for you, but can you stop judging those who do? who have it practically written into their job contract? who are performing for someone else’s entertainment? it’s not their fault society is crappy.
*looks uncomfortable* I shall try to control my subconscious biases as much as I am able.

related posts: https://lails42.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/superficiality/ and https://lails42.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/pinkage/

/cap’n/neighbor/guvnor/Esteemed Guest/Comrade/Friend/Boss/sovereign/majesty/your eminence/your grace/highness/traveller/voyager/adventurer/pal/colleague/Peasant/good person/mage/Fellow sapient/excellency/professor/Mx (pronounced mix)

…Peasant was *mostly* just for lols, but it’s one I respond to XD

“OUR FRIENDS CHANGE WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT! I HATE IT! Discord showed me what I didn’t want to see! That we could all grow into ponies different from the ones we made friends with! Ponies that may well drift away from each other! . . . THAT’S THE PRICE OF HAVING FRIENDS AND-” Twilight growled through clenched teeth, “It’s-worth-it! It will ALWAYS be worth it! Because if that pony was ever really your friend, then before or after doesn’t matter, friendship is now! It doesn’t have a future or past! No matter how distant, a friend is a friend! And my heart is more free BECAUSE I accept that!”

Wish I could say the same, Twilight. wish I could say the same. I mean the bit about accepting that. I have always believed right to my core that IT WILL ALWAYS BE WORTH IT. “the flight is always worth the fall.” but the drifting thing? accepting that it happens, and being free? yeahhhh. never gonna be okay with that.

You have abandonment issues.
Yup. didn’t you know that by now?
Didn’t know how bad they were, good luck with that!
I’m tryyinggg!
…yup. very trying.
😛

why am I sad?
why do I miss you so much….
am I so unused to being alone?

This post is a copied and pasted comment from Rackle, to give credit where it is due, because it was a REALLY GOOD response to the guy who was like “but some feminists DO hate men and they make you all look bad”.

There are a lot of feminists who are *angry* with men as a group. They have a right to be, because men as a group have really gained from women’s disadvantage. A lot of men work actively to enforce sexism. A lot of men don’t – but very few bother to educate themselves well on sexism or try to actively do anything about it. Those lovely ones who do generally work out pretty quick that anger and frustration is not about/at them (see below). All those men gain advantage from sexism even though they’re not “bad people” who “want to oppress anyone.” So yes, sometimes people will say things like “seriously I’m so fucking sick of men.” I can see why – there is a lot to be frustrated about.

So this expression of frustration. It is kind of like saying “fuck, I hate door to door salespeople.” You don’t actually hate Steve, the student, 23, who is trying to make some money to buy a new car and really hates that he has to walk around all day and only gets paid commission. You hate that there is a social concept whereby just because someone is now “a door to door salesperson,” they feel like they can come and knock on your door, disturb your fucking nap, wake your baby, and make you have an awkward conversation while 5 very important minutes of your broadcast TV show are lost forever into the depths of the unknown in your lounge.

But nobody really expects you to clarify that when complaining about door to door salespeople, because everyone gets where the frustration is from and what expressing it is about. For some reason, men often do really expect women to clarify “not all door to door salespeople” as soon as it’s frustration about men. Is it because those men haven’t made the effort to understand the frustration? Is it because those men feel like they have a right to more of women’s emotional labour, to have uncomfortable concepts made more palatable to them, in a way that door to door salespeople don’t expect of homeowners?

If you are uncomfortable with this anger, please bear in mind that expressing anger over being systematically disadvantaged is
a) not the same thing as systematically disadvantaging you back
b) something really important for people to keep sane
c) something you’re extra unprepared for because women are discouraged from and punished for showing anger
d) maybe the one point in time where we should be allowed to break our training and stop coddling men’s feelings for once and just trust that if they’ve put in effort to understand our frustration, they’ll also work out that as long as they’re doing a decent job of not being a sexist pig, it isn’t directed at them.
e) absolutely fucking justified to be honest

You’ve also just turned up in TWO conversations about problems women face, this one of which ironically is about male entitlement to our emotional labour, to try and *make it about your emotions*. You might personally also have gotten the impression that feminists hate men because if you do this a lot, I bet you’ve had quite some backlash. If you are feeling like “Here I am joining a conversation about feminism to have a good discussion and they’re all just abusing me, obviously they hate me and also all men,” please understand that no, here you are derailing a discussion about feminism and some of the feminists in it are now annoyed at you specifically.

I thought about editing this last paragraph to be less abrupt and blunt and thought maybe I shouldn’t, on the basis that I don’t want to do the emotional labour of making my expression of annoyance at someone else overstepping more palatable. And then I did a little anyway, because like, I really don’t want you to think I hate you. I’m just annoyed at you. I still hope you have a good day. I hope even more that you think think about this stuff. I hate that I feel like to improve the chances of you thinking about it, I had to make this edit. Ugh. UGH. I’m so tired of this nonsense.

and dream I do…

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don’t take him just because you can

Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green
Your smile is like a breath of spring
Your voice is soft like summer rain
And I cannot compete with you
Jolene

He talks about you in his sleep
And there’s nothing I can do to keep
From crying when he calls your name
Jolene

And I can easily understand
How you could easily take my man
But you don’t know what he means to me
Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don’t take him just because you can

You could have your choice of men
But I could never love again
He’s the only one for me
Jolene

I had to have this talk with you
My happiness depends on you
And whatever you decide to do, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don’t take him even though you can
Jolene, Jolene

As you speak I feel I aught
To analyze the lies I bought
I care less for him than I thought, Jolene
Your emerald eyes burn in the dark
And swiftly falls my sighing heart
What spell is this you’ve cast on me, Jolene

As I behold your glowing face
I long to be in your embrace
You beckon me, I stumble to Jolene
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you, take my heart Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I wish to never part from you, Jolene

I give myself in place of him
According to your changing whims
You’ve got my heart, so take me now, Jolene

Like shipwrecks on a dying reef
My skin is marked from your sharp teeth
What is it that you’ve done to me, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
None could resist your siren’s call, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene Jolene
My heart it bleeds between your claws, Jolene

Your appetite is vast and wild
I offer you my firstborn child
In hope that you might spare my soul, Joline

He screams about you in his sleep
And when he wakes, does nought but weep
In terror of the one they call, Jolene
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you, please don’t take my soul
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
We’re at your mercy, don’t consume us whole
Your darkness rends and burns my skin,
Your soul is made of pitch and sin,
Your whole existence – pain to me, Jolene.
The universe’s screaming scars
Your shadow is the death of stars
Your birth was all our primal fears, Jolene

Blackening the summer skies
with flaming wings and countless eyes
please take pity on us all, Jolene

Cities perish in your wake
Your laughter makes the mountains quake
Your fury is the howling storm, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
The mortals whisper tearfully, “Jolene…”

Jolene Jolene Jolene Jolene
The one who stole our light away, Jolene

The elders whispered tales of you
Their warnings proving all too true
Now it’s too late, and you are all, Joline

Your form inhabits time and space
Woe comes to all who see your face
The planets turn to hide from you, Joline

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
We cower here beneath your gaze Jolene
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Have mercy at the end of days Jolene

Eyes darkened in sadistic glee
As all the world begs her mercy
But she’s got none to spare for them – Jolene

The herald of insanity
The ender of humanity
There are none left to stand before Jolene

(added lyrics mostly taken from numerous people on Twitter, Michael Kelly, and Sam Swords. With a bit of addition of my own.)