….am I a humorless killjoy for not thinking this is funny and just thinking the guy is an asshole?
Young woman modifies her appearance as she sees fit.
Middle aged man takes this as license to stare, which is intrusive and borderline aggressive behavior. Creeper, stop creeping. Young woman is obviously creeped and uncomfortable, because she keeps looking and he keeps staring.
Young woman responds to this intrusion with snark, attempting to diffuse the situation and halt his creepy behavior in a socially sanctioned way (remember, as a young woman she’ll have been socialized away from direct confrontation, especially with men, especially older men who are automatically presumed to have authority. If she’d just said “Stop staring at me” she’d put herself neatly in ‘overreacting crazy bitch’ territory. Note that the fact that she has modified her appearance will be construed by many people in various positions of power as inviting any and all attention, revoking her right to be creeped, not that she really had that right in the first place…)
Middle aged man mocks her response, her appearance (and thus personal choices and aesthetic sense), and her parentage. This is presented as laudable, hilarious, possibly even heroic in the face of ‘sarcasm’.
^
Staring at teenagers should be generally considered not okay. Mocking them for their physical appearance just makes you a jackass.
^^^
When I have to visit my family in rural Oklahoma, I get remarks like this nonstop, from complete strangers.
Once, this guy, a complete stranger to me, who was visiting my stepdad at our house asked me why I had “grass growing on my head” (my hair was turquoise). My stepdad told him I’m an “experimenting college girl”, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.
The man responds, “It will grow out,” and gives me a disappointed look.
I respond, “Well, yes, but I will just dye it—”
The man cuts me off. “It will grow out,” he barks back at me, sternly, as if he has some sort of authority over me because he’s a middle aged cis-male and I’m supposed to be a weak, submissive female figure.
He then continues to rant at me about how I’m “desecrating the body God gave me” and a bunch of other shit. I just sat there and stared at him until he shut up long enough for me to retreat to my room. I don’t yet have enough courage to stand up to people back home when they treat me like this. When they make racist comments. When they make hateful homophobic remarks without knowing that I’m not straight. When they treat me like their daughter when they don’t know I’m actually their son. And so on..
My hair constantly stirred up shit like this. People think I’m “trying to rebel”, or they keep asking me “what I’m trying to stand up for” by having colorful hair. I have to keep repeating over and over, that I simply like having colored hair.
Another time, about a week after the incident I just described, I was visiting my brother where he worked, when this lady walked in. Again, a complete stranger, never saw her in my life. She’s halfway into the door when she sees me and stops dead in her tracks, just staring at me. And then she screams, “OH my GOD, what is THAT?!” ‘That’ referring to me. And then she just stands there staring at my hair, in the middle of the fucking doorway holding the door as if she just saw someone being murdered. After a bit she randomly comes to and walks off absolutely pissed, giving me this awful look; apparently my colorful existence really ruined her fucking day.
I don’t get these sorts of reactions here, at college in Pennsylvania, on the Main Line, in Philadelphia. Sometimes I get looks of curiosity, and I almost always get people coming up and saying how they like me hair; people driving by will roll down their window and shout, “I LOVE YOUR HAIR!!” gesturing at their head. This place is so different from the prudish rural communities I’ve lived in all my life. Since I’ve been here, not once have I had any negativity thrown my way at all. People stay out of your business if they don’t like you. It’s seriously a whole new world, and I’m so happy to call it my new home.
Mixing various blue dyes into hair is fun. It makes your hair look like the oooooooooooocean.
So, I got my first binder in the mail today. It’s the T-Kingdom Model 1700. (I got it from the Big Brothers Used Binder program. This binder is very gently used; it’s pretty much like new.)
The first photo above is without binding. And, of course, the second one is while wearing the binder. It doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s way better than nothing. The red shirt in the picture is a rather right shirt though; I used it to show the difference between before and after.
The black Sonic shirt is much better. It’s loose, and it has a distracting print on the front. Combining that with the poor quality of my webcam, binding seems to be pretty effective. It doesn’t look quiiiite as good in person, but it’s pretty nice.
And, then there is layering.
I am a jacket whore. I love jackets. Especially suit jackets.
And as you can see, binding seems to work pretty well when you have more than just a t-shirt on.. I’m pleased with the results.
Might be a bit difficult to do this summer, when jackets and a binder will be miserable.. but it’s worth a try I guess.
Also, I tried a tie with this all as well, and it’s better than before, but you can still see that it isn’t lying on something flat.. the tie still makes the contours more visible. But as if I actually give a hoot — I love ties too much to care.
I still think I might try out an Underworks binder, to see if it works any better or not. I’m not sure. *shrug*
Still, this isn’t as bad as everyone says it is; it doesn’t hurt at least. Yay!
It feels kind of like.. being given a constant tight hug? Hah, I dunno. It’s interesting.
But.. I guess I haven’t been wearing it for very long; I’m sure as the hours go by I might change my mind about how “comfortable” this is.. heh.
Fuck this semester. Fuck this finals week. It’s over; I’m through with this nonsense.
Just got a call from my younger brother. He just flipped his Jeep. Three times.
All he got was a few deep cuts in his arm; he’s currently at the hospital getting the bits of glass removed.
Apparently he’s fine. But still, AUUUHGKBJESGHBAGEFAKHNEDGRF :((
I always feel so guilty when I feel dysphoric.
(TW: dysphoria, and maybe TMI in general.)
For every part of my body that I loathe, there is someone else out there that would give anything to have been born with it.
For every bodily function that makes me feel miserable in my own skin, there is someone else out there for which it’s a tragedy that they don’t experience said function.
Every month I’m sent into a wildly depressed state when my period comes around. I hate that time period with every inch of my being. But somewhere out there, there is a trans woman that feels like something’s missing, because she will never be able to have periods.
I’ve always been wildy paranoid about getting pregnant. It’s probably the single worst phobia I have. (Seriously, if I got pregnant without a way to stop it, it would send me into suicidal mania.) It’s triggering beyond belief. Yet.. there are so many women out there who will never be able to birth a child of their own, to form life in their likeness. For some people, it would be the greatest joy in the world.
I often wish I had a flat chest. It’s not outrageously huge, so usually I’m pretty complacent, but the misgendering it causes always drives me up the wall. (And sometimes it really just gets in the way, you know?!) To me it’s an annoying pest, but elsewhere, there people who wish they had a chest like mine. They have to have surgeries, they have to stuff bras, they have to do whatever it takes to get the curves that I often wish I could simply shed.
It always makes me feel so guilty. So cruel, that the things I consider to be torturous, are things that others would consider a blessing. It makes me feel hateful that I would want to get rid of these things, when so many people desperately yearn for them.
I always wonder why I can’t just… I don’t know.. take them and give them to a person who actually wants and needs them!
It makes me feel awful when I want to get rid of these things, knowing that it’s a “waste of what I was given”. Body parts aren’t clothing; sure, they’re necessities, but you can’t just hand them down to the next person that needs them.
It always leaves me conflicted..
Oklahoma public television narrowly survives in House | Oklahoman.com →
Good fucking lord, even OETA has to fight to stay alive?
It’s like everything I think is good about my home state has to put up a huge fight for its existence.
People want to get rid of public educational television. People want to get rid of my school, the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics (OSSM). People want to get rid of Women & Gender Studies at OU. Everywhere you look, education is getting the short end of the fucking stick, and I’m so tired of it.
So. Fucking. Sick. Of this shit.
But, come on, really? OETA? Why shut OETA down?
Come on, they’re fucking awesome! Their programming exclusively defines my childhood television consumption. (It was literally the only one of two channels available to my family, you guys.)
During my senior year, I participated in one of OETA’s telethons. I went to their station, and it was SO COOL. OETA relys very heavily on volunteer support and donations. I can’t imagine how devastating it would be to have their state funding taken away. Would they even be able to function anymore?
This just.. upsets me. Oklahoma, for fuck’s sake, get your shit together. Sometimes I get tired of telling people I’m from Oklahoma and having them think I’m joking. Seriously.
I may be away, but I’m watching you.
Re-dyed my hair last night. A lovely blue.
No more nasty faded purple hairs for meeeee
Coming out as a trans guy.
That’s what I’m doing. Right here, right now.
I’m a dude. Plain and simple.
I can’t keep lying to myself anymore; can’t keep denying how I feel. I’m tired of the constant pain and cognitive dissonance that comes with willfully misgendering myself.
I’m not a girl. I’m not female. I’m not a woman. I’m not a “she”. And I’m tired of being told that I am. I’m tired of trying to convince MYSELF that I am in any remote sense at all.
It doesn’t matter if I was assigned that gender when I was born. It’s the wrong one. Simple as that.
Sure, sometimes I might be flamboyant. Sure, I’m usually pretty softspoken. Sure, I like to be the biggest genderfuck on the planet. But do any of these things make me a female? Of course not. No matter which way I’m dressed a certain day, no matter what activities I’m participating in, no matter what is going on on any day, I’m still a guy doing those things. I’ve had enough of trying to tell myself, “I’m a girl some days and a guy other days.” That simply isn’t true for me. (Don’t get me wrong — I know that is precisely how it works for many people! But it doesn’t work like that for me, and saying it does it a big fat lie.)
No matter how femme I might look on any given day (which almost never happens anyway; I hate looking feminine for the most part), I’m still a guy. If you ever see me wearing a skirt or dress, it doesn’t mean I’m a girl. It means I’m a guy in a skirt or dress. (But, again, this only happens either when people force me to or when I want to feel like a drag queen. Seriously. Dresses can burn in hell for all I care. But hopefully you get the point of the example.)
Trying to tell myself that “I’m a girl some days and a guy other days” makes me feel like the little boy in elementary school that gets picked on for liking the color pink and wanting to play with a doll. It doesn’t make him not a boy. It makes him a boy that likes playing with lots of different things. And that’s exactly what I am. I’m a dude that occasionally does something really “girly”, which is perfectly okay. My problem lies in how society doesn’t understand that a guy can be a guy and have breasts, or not have a dick.
Putting off coming out as a guy has been increasingly causing me problems. Every day I get more and more stressed about it. So it’s time to end this nonsense.
It’s time to start changing a few things, the main things right now being vocabulary.
Being called “she” and “her” feels so.. humiliating. I’m so tired of it. Every time I get called “she”, it feels like my soul is getting kicked in the crotch. It just hurts.
And it hurts even worse when I keep telling people that I don’t mind female pronouns.
I do mind, and it’s time I stop ignoring my own needs.
I know I can’t come out to everyone. It wouldn’t be safe to do so, say, to my family members in Oklahoma. There are many people I don’t know how to come out to at all.
Right now, I’m struggling to figure out how to come out to my own peers at a liberal arts college, for crying out loud. It already took me long enough to come out to myself — I still struggle with the words to tell the rest of the world.
So I decided to make one of my starts here. Yay for Tumblr. <3
Anyway, this is really long for what was supposed to be a short notice. *shrug*
It’s something my mind constantly raves about, and I really need to get all of my thoughts organized so that maybe communicating with other people will get easier. Maybe I should start writing more. Or something.
YAY new Tumblr theme.
Not that it matters; I’m pretty sure that I’m the only person that really looks at my page. But whatever. It looks nice either way. Hah.
…now that I think about it, the background image probably takes an eon and a half to load.
BUT THIS IS ME NOT GIVING A FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
Grabbed my pair of who-knows-how-old, holey, no-longer-fitting jeans, cut off the pockets and zipper, and made a three-pocket bag. With a rainbow.
Was easier than I thought it would be.
Lost ipod and the mental effects of its absence.
I’ve been full of ups and downs this past week, a major down being that my beloved ipod, Amadeus, has been missing. He fell out of my pocket sometime the weekend before last, and I have not seen him since. I’ve been searching high and low to no avail.
The problem isn’t necessarily that the physical item is lost (although that is really unfortunate too, since it was handed down to me from a friend who didn’t use it anymore), it’s what was on it. My entire collection of music that I’ve been gathering since before middle school is gone…
“Why didn’t you back it up?” Well.. I’m not accustomed to having a nice enough computer that HAD about 8gb of memory to spare… my current laptop can do that, but I’ve only had this computer for a few months — I worked all winter to save up and purchase it. (My previous computers have all been ‘junkers’ I threw together from old parts found in garbage cans… *blush*) And, well, I take VERY good care of my things, and always had my ipod, Amadeus, on me anyway, so it never occurred to me that I should put my ipod’s contents on my computer just in case. Things don’t usually fall out of my pockets! It really is strange…
My boyfriend has an ipod touch that is still in the box; he’s had it for who-knows-how-long and had never bothered using it, as he likes having all his music on his computer (his music habits are the foil of mine, I guess you could say). He told me that if I don’t find Amadeus this week, I should just take his ipod and start rebuilding.
It’s SO incredibly nice of him.. I really hope I find my ipod though, as I don’t want to take his, even if it’s true that he doesn’t use it and it lies under his bed in its unopened state. I always feel weird about receiving such expensive things (I got Amadeus in a very similar way, with its old owner getting a new ipod and not wanting their old one anymore, and me not having one.. they insisted I take it. I’m still forever grateful for such kindness.).
There are only a few plausible places I haven’t checked for Amadeus yet, and it’s very unlikely he will be there. But I will look anyway.
I’ve posted on the college boards about it, asked folks on Facebook and in person.. nobody’s had any luck. Amadeus just… vanished.
I will keep trying my hardest, but I have the sinking feeling that I’m going to need to start hunting for my most treasured songs all over again… :(
This all probably sounds like a terrible cliche, but music is a very important component of my mental health and maintenance. Through my childhood and even up to now, music has given me a place to find solace and strength. Through all the trauma, through everything that has happened, I’ve never needed medications or other “help” because I’ve been able to fill it in with music. Music is a very cathartic experience for me, mentally and physically. I could go on for a long time about it, but I will spare you.
I just.. I need to take care of this soon. It’s a very, very bad problem. Let’s just leave it at that…. :S
