My Local Gas Station

viserys may theoretically be king of a solid 85% of westeros but honestly my dude looks like the beleaguered night manager of a 7/11

Short comic I’m doing for patreon. A request for a comic with shapeshifting gone wrong. Here’s the first two pages so far <3 -COEY! PAGES 3 + 4  PAGES 5+6+7 ____

Beginning the Process of Accountability

EDIT: This post was written before I was made aware of the full scope of the widespread harm my actions were responsible for. I absolutely know that this statement is insultingly inadequate. I hoped releasing something that acknowledged in any way that these claims are valid and I’m seeking a trained professional would be an indication that this isn’t something I’m just waiting out with the hope it’ll go away.

I have reblogged the groups post because their statement is a much more comprehensive overview of everything than what I posted.

All seven statements of harm have been given to my therapist and we will be going over them in the weeks to come. I am in no way trying to dispute or argue any of the survivors experiences. I believe their accounts more than my own because I know I have had years of mental justification and denial that clouds my memory of reality. This is something that my therapists specializes in overcoming. The full depth of my harmful actions when I first wrote the below statement were still being put together, and agree it minimizes the hurt I’ve caused people in a way that is manipulative and untruthful to the community and the survivors.

After I go over each statement of harm with my therapists I will write another statement that better recognizes, and takes responsibility for my acts of sexual violence, including the manipulation I have applied to the survivors and the group. For way too long in this process I centered my own emotions in a way that was extremely damaging to people who were even trying to help me. At first, I was too worried about being called a serial rapist, and not worried enough that I actually was one. This has been a shift in how I see myself- the denial and rationalization I’ve been using for the past 8 years is actively being faced with both of my therapists. I also know this is too little too late, no amount of work I do will undo the damage I’ve caused so many people. I have caused widespread harm both emotionally and physically, and there will never be an excuse for that.

At the beginning of this process, I was pushed by a friend to seek intensive therapy from the Center for Contextual Change. The individual program I currently am in is the same one rapists convicted in a court are legally required to enroll in. Each week she assigns me work to do every day I am not in therapy. At any time in the work she feels like I am not being honest with her or myself, she will stop and challenge what I have said.

This is the beginning to a lifelong process. I am committed to seeing it through. I am committed to not running away from this, and doing everything I can to work towards the goals both the group and survivors have. The sexual misconduct therapist I have been working with will be in regular communication with the group to insure that any misrepresentation of facts I have will be dismantled and corrected.

——

Many folks in the community have recently become aware of my history of harmful behavior both in and outside of relationships, and are rightfully very concerned. I have violated partner’s consent and have been emotionally harmful to people I’ve dated. When my friends and some community members confronted me about it, I agreed that engaging an accountability process with the community would be the best course of action. This accountability process is currently being outlined and I am dedicated to seeing it through. I am taking steps to address my behavior, and these will be very integrated into my accountability process.

I am engaged in daily therapy with a specialist who focuses on intimate partner violence, as well as a separate weekly therapist who focuses on healing patterns of sexual harm. Breaking down the years of rationalizing and denial– to fully understand and face the pain I’ve put into other people’s lives– has been the first step in this process. I have begun reading extensively about consent, masculinity, and fostering healthy relationships(1). I am building up a group of friends around me to guide me as I do this, as well as keep me accountable.

I am currently in a relationship and my girlfriend is aware of my harmful actions. She is supportive of my recovery and her participation is giving me the chance to practice the growth and change I am actively pursuing. I am very grateful for her support.

I am deeply sorry for all people I have hurt and violated. I am taking the harm I have done very seriously and am working diligently to make sure it never happens again. I know there is no forgiving what I’ve done, and even posting this will just be seen as empty lip service. I hope that by sharing my commitment to progress over the coming months and years I can regain trust in the community as a safe person.

-Alex Kime

(1) 1. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love       2. Learning Good Consent: On Healthy Relationships and Survivor Support       3. Rape Is Rape: How Denial, Distortion, and Victim Blaming Are Fueling a Hidden Acquaintance Rape Crisis       4. The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships       5. Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape       6. Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth       7. Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair       8. Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement.       9. Getting Past the Pain Between Us: Healing and Reconciliation Without Compromise

I am only reblogging this and adding this statement because victims who approached me asked me to.  Honestly, I protected myself from the truth about Alex by telling myself that the accusations were all old, that they all had happened a long time ago. In fact, it has honestly still been hard for me to reconcile my experience with him with the statements I’ve read from victims. I feel guilty when I write about it or share posts outing him. I still feel bad for him. I still feel like he doesn’t deserve this because I still wanna think it meant anything when he met my mom or said he loved me or carefully said “you have to say yes first” when we were in bed together.  While I believed all the victims, I really thought he had changed when all of this started coming out. When I dated him, he was always concerned about consent. He wouldn’t even take my sock off without asking. He would constantly ask for active consent. If I got too drunk at a bar, he would refuse to go home with me, even if I said it was ok. So, a month into dating, when one of his victims contacted me to warn me and said, “people change, maybe he changed,” I really thought he did. I talked to my closest friends about it and we all agreed, he had to have changed.  Even as 7 women came forward, I thought “well, these are from a long time ago and he stopped assaulting women, he just emotionally manipulates people now.” I really thought he wasn’t capable of doing those things anymore. But then another victim contacted me and told me her assault took place only a few months before Alex and I started going out. That made me realize Alex had never changed when he was with me, he was just putting on a performance. He had already been called out by previous victims and knew he had to be careful. He knew I knew his friends when we started dating. I knew people in his industry. I had the right social capital. His focus on consent was only a way to protect himself. But if I had just been a complete stranger on tinder, with no ties to the DIY community or his friends or career, I wouldn’t have gotten that performance. I would be like this girl, who has just been suffering alone for 18 months, until one day she saw a post on facebook outing him for what he did.  Alex is very good at performing. When his friends went to his house and told him they were starting an accountability process, the first thing he did was donate money to a rape and sexual assault charity. I know this because the second thing he did was tell me about it and sent me a screenshot of the receipt. When I told him his anti-black actions/comments and lies meant I could no longer be his friend or support him, I jokingly said he could make a donation to Assata’s Daughters and leave my black ass alone. He replied with a screenshot of the monthly donations he set up for Assata’s Daughters. He is all about performance. So know this: -Both of his statements were written without the knowledge of the group leading his accountability process. Both of his statements have further distressed his victims and are for his own benefit and reputation.  -All seven victim statements were NOT shared with his therapist. Some of them did not want to share them.

as much as we joke about scaring off twitter refugees around these parts im like. genuinely sorry to all of ya'll moving over. losing your main platform (especially as an artist/creator) to the incompetence of one of the worst human beings alive sucks major ass

Looking for many of my dearest friends, most of whom exist entirely in my head

Jill Bearup (this is why we can't have nice things)

Recently we posted a ringing endorsement of the work of British Youtuber Jill Bearup for her videos exploring theatrical combat and various tropes. In doing so, we accidentally signal boosted someone with an unresolved history of promoting transphobia. We apologise for that. 

At the time we were not aware that in 2017 (a month or so after the last time we posted any of her content), Jill made a Tumblr post portraying trans activists as the bullies against TERFs, and essentially calling for them to instead rely upon respectability politics. 

(Archive here, content warnings for violence, TERF rhetoric, and surgery photos)

As anyone who follows the issue even casually knows this is, to put it politely, bullshit propaganda that transphobes of all sorts use to encourage harassment and violence against trans people. It is deplorable for an influencer to use one of their platforms to spread this kind of hateful nonsense. 

It appears that Jill took the offending post down some time in 2019, but we have been unable to find any evidence why she did that, or that she ever apologized, or what her current views may be. She doesn’t seem to have approached the topic in any way, shape or form on her YouTube channel (her primary platform) or elaborated further beyond the one post that got a little over 200 notes. 

She also doesn’t seem to have done anything to help trans people or promote trans acceptance either. 

Our stance at Bikini Armor Battle Damage is simple: 

Had we been aware at the time, we wouldn’t have made the post. The original post is still up, but has been edited with a warning and our stance.

Sadly, as Jill is one of the less reactionary of the few people who talk about combat and armor in fiction (ahem), we’re at a loss to propose a similar resource. But we definitely will not be further promoting any of her stuff and wanted anyone who might have subscribed to or promoted her channel to be aware of this. 

~Ozzie, - wincenworks

for my fellow psychotics who struggle with thinking someone is in their house, a method I’ve found that really works are these guys:

i put them on my front door and anytime it opens they ring. that way if i think someone has broken in or i see someone who isn’t there i can think back to if the bells have rung, and if they haven’t i can assure myself it’s not real. obviously it’s not fool proof, like if you are prone to auditory hallucinations, but it has really helped me calm down in time to avoid major psychotic breaks. it’s a real lifesaver

nonpsychotics encouraged to rb

9.13.21. New York City

NYPD arrest non-violent protestors outside the Met Gala, including BLM protestors. NYPD used the notoriously brutal SRG to arrest non-violent protestors. This occurred outside the ultra-wealthy fundraising event whose theme this year was "In America".

CashApp $4OurLiberation to bail out those arrested, including Ella, pictured above

i saw that ella was released, but i haven’t heard anything about des or many of the others arrested. please, please, please donate if you can—even if it’s a couple of dollars. it adds up!

need more posts of this genre

Kinda hard to read the last addition so

Source, Wiki

And he looks

The man has the legs for it honestly

WORK IT KING!!!

we stan a legend

reblogging for the last part (and also he DOES have the legs for it)

that story is total bullshit and has no source. not one interview with mark bryan mentions this supposed workplace harassment situation. he literally just started wearing skirts and heels because he likes them, its not that deep.

can we stop acting like men need some kind of “gotcha” reason to wear dresses and skirts?? constantly trying to make up some kind of justification for a guy wearing a skirt just helps uphold the shitty idea that clothes are gendered and that people like mark bryan are some kind of mystical outlier for literally just wearing the clothes they want to wear

He actually stated in this interview (2020 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung) that he began wearing high heels because he got bored of wearing suits/ formal clothing.

He said that a friend commented on his legs which would look great in skirts so he decided to give it a try. That’s the whole story.

This website makes me insane

Tumblr makes my head hurt. He still looks fantastic though.

sisyphormation

i feel like the reason everyone makes fun of trans men & men-adjacents is because the face of the trans male community is an upper middle class white boy, but that doesn’t excuse the way that people relentlessly mock “kai he/they”s and like, Basic trans boys. or infantilize them. like there’s joking about common coincidences between trans men and then there’s literaly transphobic stereotyping that erases trans men of color from the conversation. what im trying to get at is if youre cis stop making jokes about how every trans guy has a galaxy binder and is named skyler and plays ukelele and is a softboy because 1) those things arent even bad, 2) the trans men you have come into contact with are majority white and they are not the only people in our community, and 3) its not your fucking place to joke about trans people. 

cis people can reblog but dont add on

People in Hollywood try so hard to design terrifying monsters, only to be outdone by MRI scans of pugs.

being queer and seeing historical queer love is like a punch to the gut in a good way every time

crying and sobbing crying and sobbing etc

I think cis people who don’t have gender dysphoria but just want to mess around with gender and are fully informed about all that hormones do should be able to easily get hrt if they want it. I think cis women that hate their chest and feel like its stressing them out quite a bit should be able to get top surgery and get it covered if they want to. I think cis men who hate or just dislike their body hair and want it removed, should be able to get it removed and that should be covered. I think anyone who wants bottom surgery should have access to it.

Like it’s your body. You get to make these decisions. Not a doctor or a psychiatrist. The way transition is something that in many doctor’s eyes only binary trans people should get access to just reinforces that we should all try being as close to the cis ideal as we can.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about how, yes cis people can also use whatever pronouns they like, but honestly? Cis people can have whatever access to any part of “transition” they desire.

give cis men tits

My friend is a cis woman and has painfully large breasts. Not only does it give her dysphoria, it makes it difficult to find clothes and she has to pay more for special bras, but it’s also causing a slew of back issues and makes it tough to breathe when she lays on her back. Her doctors won’t allow her to get top surgery, however, because it’s considered cosmetic and not a valid reason for top surgery. One doctor even said, “Most women want large breasts. Have you discussed it with your husband—he’ll be disappointed.” This makes it seem like misogyny is driving this decision. Of course, there is risk associated with surgery, but it needs to become more accessible to both cis and trans folks because there are real consequences (medical and psychological).

That is so common. Honestly, we need to make full bodily self-determination for all our goal. (And ‘for all’ means ‘for all’, not ‘only for those who can afford it’.)