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hartlow

@hartlow

idk my pronouns go crazy ~ writer with chronic illness

sideblog for rambling about my ocs/writing: @armentas (but please be warned that i write a lot about subjects that could be triggering, mainly mental health subjects and ableism.)

you're always free to tag me in posts or start small talk with me! if you tag me in something, i love you and you're going in my will

And you can make the rubric for this question whatever you want. My personal one was that young me would be horrified to know she became current me, but that’s because I imagine it’d be quite horrible to a child learning and growing to no longer get to wonder who you’ll be when you grow up, and I think if she and I just like met somehow, she’d think I was a cool adult. Like one of those teachers you get to banter with a little.

start normalizing long hair as androgynous. long hair can be gender-neutral too.

tired of seeing nonbinary characters & fashion with short, dyed hair. give me long-haired enbies or give me death

just saw a post where someone put “detrans dni” and like… hey we should be supporting detransitioned people bc if we don’t terfs will

sometimes you’re wrong about your identity and that’s ok like i used to think i was bi but it turns out i was wrong and i know ppl who thought they were trans but it turns out they were wrong and it should be ok and accepted that sometimes people don’t get it right on the first try

@shadowknight1224 this is an excellent way of putting it thank you

This touches on something I have felt for a long time, which is that one of the reasons rigid queer labels and gatekeeping is so dangerous is because if you want to encourage people to explore their gender/sexuality, there has to be a safe "Actually I was wrong" option.

I went through so very much anxiety coming out, and when I really think about it it was squarely from the fear of being wrong about it all. That I was, at heart, a cishet woman, and therefore I was appropriating a label that didn't 'belong' to me, and I would (somehow) be harming other people by doing so. There's so much more unnecessary pressure if the sword hanging over your head is "But you do have to be right about this, you can't back out once you've even asked the question."

I think that is Bad. I think it makes fewer people ask the question. I think that includes those who need to ask, and would be much happier for it.

to summarize: one of the things the Q stands for is QUESTIONING

and that is as it should be

I’d like to also submit the possibility that some people may be more prone to shifts in their gender identity than others, and that it’s not necessarily even a case of being “wrong,” so much as it’s a case of just changing over time. I know the predominant narrative we see in discourse is that a person who transitions was never their agab—and I’m sure that’s true for a lot of people! But… it’s not true everyone? I remember reading an interview with Danny Lavery after he came out, and he said something along the lines of “One day, I went to bed a woman and woke up not a woman anymore.” So if a person can change once, who’s to say that can’t change again? For example, I know Eddie Izzard (whose labels have shifted a lot over the decades, as terminology and options for gender identities identity have changed many times over since the 1980s) has said she goes through long block periods of being a particular gender, so right now she’s “based in girl mode,” (her words) but she’s previously had blocks of time being based in “boy mode,” too. So like, whose to say other people don’t have block periods like that? Maybe somebody really was non-binary for ten years and now they’re not anymore, y’know? Not feeling something about yourself forever doesn’t have to mean you were wrong the whole time. Of course, being wrong is okay too! But I’d make room for both.

i LOVE this addition, especially because it helps us move away from the "ive always known" narrative that dominates so much trans space. sometimes your gender literally changes, and it's not helpful or healthy of us to act like that means everything that came before was false or mistaken.

Gender Fluid Vibes… Nice!

Oh look, it’s me! Like, my gender has definitely changed over time and while it seems to have settled as queer/indefinable for a decade now, it might change again one day and I could end up identifying with a binary gender again. 

And can I get a shout out for the people who transition more than once and still identify as trans even though the pronouns/gender they ended up in might be somewhat similar to the one that were assigned at birth? Y’all are beautiful. Keep on being great.

parents are so crazy because they can say the most fucked up shit to you when your brain is forming and it sets the tone for your whole adult mind set and then they forget about it the next day

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manager in the fanfiction universe: I don't care how many flower petals you're coughing up. You need to come in today

Okay, but I would pay extra for this driveway.

Um, can I please get every neighborhood kid and animal to come walk across my driveway? Can I get a cat to just run around on there? This flock of ducks did such an amazing job!

I was 18 months old when my parents built their house. After pouring the concrete slab for the foundation, my father, world’s most sentimental man, carried me down into the hole so he could preserve a single imprint of my little baby foot in the house he was building for me to grow up in.

Naturally, I wriggled loose, so what is actually preserved for posterity in my parents’ basement floor is my mad dash through this glorious new mud pit, followed by my father’s footprints in hot pursuit, a visible scuffle where the fugitive was captured, and then my father’s prints returning to the ladder.

I hope some future archeologist finds your parent’s basement floor because they’re going to lie down on the ground and cry about it.

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actually you know what that's exactly it i would rather someone add 5 parantheticals after every sentence than use tone indicators it's 1. accomplishing SO much more in terms of clarity 2. extremely funny to look at depending on how they're used

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observe:

"is this real? /gen" — i thought /gen meant "general" for ages. i would not be able to understand this on first sight a few years ago and is thus ineffective

"is this real? (genuine question)" — i fully understand this without issue

"is this real? (genuine question) (can't tell) (very realistic) (looks real) (scary) (photoshop?)" — is not only incredibly clear it's also very funny to read all of these thoughts stapled together while also in their own parentheses. it's also the most useful because now i can actually address all parts of what they are asking me with as much specificity as BOTH of us need

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when a mutuals struggling but you know you can't say anything to help so you just like their post and hope they know they're not alone

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there are some things my brain will just never let me live down. i wrote lyrics for a song about ravenpaw from warrior cats when i was 11, one of the stanzas starting with "i'm scared, i'm scared, i don't know if he knows", so now i literally can never say the very common phrase "i'm scared" without the ravenpaw song playing in my mind. it's been 6 years can we stop clowning me yet