#equator journal

[nsnousworld]

saturdays...

#Montgomery Kaluhiokalani #surfing #equator journal #vintage photo #70s #ocean photography

[catboybiologist]

Are you comfortable with questions about your journey to HRT?

Like, mentally how you took the leap of faith from femboy to needing something more / different. Asking for, uh, *a friend*, yeah 👀

Holy shit, this got long. This springboarded me into a massive writing about how my life influenced my personal gender philosophy, and is probably more than you bargained for. But I hope it's helpful in some way! I actually had a similar conversation recently with an NB, not on HRT friend of mine. What's the jump that makes you want to do HRT?

I don't think my experience parallels that of a lot of people's - everyone's is unique. But I do think there are good takeaways from my thoughts on this. Now that I have an Adderall prescription and my quarter is about to end, I've started writing some kind of more cited and developed essay or video essay, but that's random future stuff. This post itself is gonna be a little rambling, and a little personal. Sorry!

Vaguely, I think that the *push* to start HRT was a distinct force from tearing down the internal barriers associated with HRT, if that makes any sense. For many people, I think they have some sense of a mild preference of the gender they would "want" to be, but it doesn't bother them enough to actually break down the barriers to transition. For me, breaking those barriers, both internal and external, was as important as the motivations to transition themselves.

One of the major barriers in people's heads, often without them realizing it, is some kind of inherent belief in the "sanctity" of their body. For many people, "permanent changes" are terrifying, "unnatural", and even if they don't have medical risks, intrinsically *feel* like a medical risk they're taking on some level. It's an offshoot of purity culture in a weird way- it's the same root as a fear of psychiatric medicine making you "not you". Much of this is intrinsically religious, but a lot is actually not. I had a little bit of this growing up. Being raised atheist certainly helped in this regard, even though it was still a queerphobic slavic atheism.

The tiny bit of this I did have was sanctity of my mind, which internally, I still viewed as a separate entity from my body. This was 100% incited by crushing academic pressure, which influenced how I think and my own morality in a lot of unexpected ways. I grew up in a kind of infamously high pressure education area. It sounds unrelated, but it's really not. My mind, academics, and thinking kind of got put on a pedestal on my mind. My personal image of myself was basically a detached orb of thoughts and public speaking. I had 0 connection to my body. But since my mind was everything, both psychiatric medication and HRT were these vile things that could alter how I think and my mood! Gasp!

The final, crushing blow to both of these mentalities was studying biology. And WOW there's so much I could say about how studying biology has influenced how I think about this idea, which I want to talk about a lot more outside of the scope of just a tumblr post. But to summarize- it's not even about finding a biological "reason" for transness. It's about how I saw a living thing as a detailed, dynamic, intricate, constantly changing system that is as much a function of its environment as it is any intrinsic factors. And this includes the mind. So since I'm a shambling mass of chemicals anyways..... Why not be a shambling mass of slightly different chemicals?

The "detached orb" image isn't entirely accurate, though. Because, from an early age, I did have a self image that made me happy. And it was a female one. I shoved this deeply out of my mind in shame, leaving behind the "orb". This was my "push", as I called it before. In addition to a weird separation between my mind and my body, an additional factor contributed to my detachment- a growing distress around developing male traits during puberty, which coincided in the worst ways with academic pressure during teen and preteen years. Looking back, I now recognize this as dysphoria. I don't think my dysphoria was ever as extreme as many other people. But this is why I'm emphasizing taking down barriers as much as the weight of dysphoria itself. It has always been easy to distract from my dysphoria, but it's always been my "resting state" without realizing it.

Linked a bit to the second point is also how I felt shame about exploring any aspect of my life other than academic and professional achievement. Being raised in a high pressure environment means that any exploration of my queer identity felt like a distraction from the "real" things I should be focusing on. The final thing that tore this down, which I don't recommend for ANYONE, was an almost traumatic set of events during the pandemic/my masters degree that made me have a wake up call. I wasn't structuring anything in my life for my own happiness. Going through that made me realize I was going to continue being miserable unless I changed that. So... I started taking the idea of transitioning to actually work on my happiness very seriously.

Being a femboy was actually how I tried to reconcile these things in my head. It was my attempt to "compartmentalize"- allow myself to gently indulge in gender nonconformity and the happiness associated with it, while still not making the "commitment" to fully transition. It helps that most of my existence as a femboy was crossdressing during the height of the pandemic- spending hours on analysis and writing while living alone during my MS, wearing femme outfits while I did it. And of course, taking pics to kick off this whole online persona. I also kind of liked the idea of cis gender nonconformity as a concept, and still do. I love how femboys fuck with gender, and I wanted a slice of that for myself. It wasn't enough long term, and my new commitment to happiness overcame my desire to compartmentalize.

The final barriers were practical. By the end of my masters in 2022, I knew I wanted to transition, I just needed to get my social and financial shit together. Cue moving to my PhD university, becoming active in the queer community here, having an accepting professional environment... and yeah. Here I am. Still gotta socially transition outside of my queer circles, but now, I even have a plan for that. I still got a long way to go, but for the first time, I feel like I'm going in the right direction. And I'm very, very happy.

A lot of this is not applicable to everyone. It's mostly my personal experience. But if there is one thing that I think should apply to everyone here, it's this: kill bioessentialism in your mind. Kill the concept of complete sanctity of your mind and body. Break the barriers and then let yourself move freely across the new landscape you've opened up. At the very least, you'll come out with a more healthy relationship with your cis identity. And at best, you'll find a new part of you that needed to be found.

The other thing I think is broadly applicable is this: when initially figuring things out, stop thinking about what you "are", and start thinking about what you want. Would it make you happy to grow breasts, curves, have a femme face, estrogen regulated emotions, and other transfemme HRT changes? Because those are the actual, physical effects of HRT. If the answer is yes, start it. There's no reason not to. Your identity can come later. You deserve to be happy *for the explicit purpose of being happy*. You don't need to validate that desire through some other random factor.

This got WAAAYYYY too long, but if you have any questions, please, please ask!!!!

#im gonna use trans femboy nb and a binch of other random tags bc of how this deals with the interface of all of them #im not equating them or calling trans people crossdressers to be clear #trans #transgender #queer #genderqueer #nonbinary #transfemme #transmasc #femboy #transitioning #trans journal #trans journey #lgbt #hrt #transition #trans pride #cross dressing #mtf trans #trans fem

[castielcommunism]

it’s a shame john’s journal is only brought out as a lore resource. dean mentions having read it front to back several times but we never see the brothers reading it just for the sake of it

#bro.txt #john #they talk about it like an encyclopaedia more than a holy text #which is weird! it’s a weird choice #probably just for lazy reasons but i feel like sam especially would have a special relationship to it #like sam has a very different relationship to the concept of the truth than dean does #and like his father is incorrect in this equation. the truth exists external to john for sam #so him using his father’s journal as a factual resource is like. weird idk

[remembertheplunge]

8/14/1990

How can John be so fucking cavalier and cruel? He said today if I went "really gay" that he would drop me as a friend. I told him he was prejudiced and racist.. He equated being gay to robbing banks and insinuated that I could change. he thought he could talk me into change. i asked him first to change the building or the cloud. He said "those are inanimate objects", like his brain, I fear. So lost is he. So lost and reaching out in the dark are we. We outside the pale, we gay types of suburbia. I'm a gay public defender who is not too cute or too rich in suburban Modesto. Big league hate thrown from all directions. Now, throw in unmarried, no kids, artist, metaphysical solotudinest Life's fun really. Nite.

#8/14/1990 #journaling #writing #gay in suburbia #being gay equated to robbing banks #friend may terminate friendship if you act too gay #gay cannot be healed or changed #solitudinist

[prophetofthemuse]

“The Scarecrow from the Batman Rogues Gallery is Jedidiah Martin if he was less ethical” is not a conclusion I thought would be drawn today, and yet here we are.

#something something the journal testing #and equating a person to an animal while using him as a lab rat #but I digress…. #teaparty gospel

[jeanambrojo]

@j_ambrojo

#journal #travel #equator #film #dune #desert #world

[mejomonster]

I love reading the studies on potential existence beyond or outside of the body. I hate how much some of those books drone on before getting to the point.

#rant #1 hit me up if you want book names #2 i read one about research on existence after death. but a philosopher wrote it :/ #so despite mentionung studies he just ranted about his philosphical proof. which fine... convince another philosopher i guess :/ #but as a philosophical arguement i found it Annoying and not as useful to me the reader as a #more scientist structured discussion of the research would have been. #meanwhile theres some great books featuring equations. so Mathematical proofs for a concious universe #but 1 book spends 400 pages on experiments (cool but i wouldve liked math FIRST) then 100 pages of math and explanation #another book has math only and its 90 pages and probably my favorite theory on how the universe works #then theres an overview of experiements book. in soviet union #but its from an american tourist writer :/ so at least 60% of the text is stupid tourist Description bullshit #i dont want an Exagerated journal of adventures bitch. i want to hear what the research and outcomes and equations and evidence is!!!! #and youtube lectures? a lot of good ones on ted talks and some university youtube lectures #but theyre for general audiences so they often avoid mentioning the math (since the audience wouldnt necessarily Get the mathematical theory #) which annoys me because I WANT TO SEE THEIR MATHEMATICAL THEORY #i want them to SPECIFY WHICH OF THE BOOKS THEY WROTE IS MATHEMATICAL OR PHYSICS HEAVY IN DESCRIBING THIS STUFF #i can read physics. let me!!!! let me look at ur fucking theory so i can form a better opinion on it!!!

[vermillioncrown]

Vs. Shutoku, Miho, and the okonomiyaki shop

Taiga just wants to ball and go home, you guys.

#on bil #kuroko no basuke #kuroko no basuke fanfic #knb fanfic #kagami taiga #why am i up? i was writing my journal paper #well i was formatting equations and it sucks

[buttercupart]

Sorry for marcy’s journal spoilers but litcherally no more than 24 hrs          NEVERMIND SCRATCH THAT IT WAS FIVE DAYS??? after i had an autism moment and paralleled cirro and mello to sasharcy do we get the lore bomb dropped on us that timeskip sasha asked marcy to move in with her and “stay as long as she wanted” which is literally what . Thats what. THATS WHAT THEY . thats how those tw .The. THE??? now im no expert but i know what that means now ive seen it with my two eyes

#im like a child at school finally getting a math equation right OOH OOH IVE SEEN THIS ONE BEFORE #amphibia spoilers #marcy's journal spoilers #not art

[elisanous]

Sun traditional art of the Aegan Islands. From "The Aegean: the epicenter of Greek civilization," 1992.

#equator journal

[dcwnthercbbithcle]

How have your first few days here been Ophelia? Talked to anyone interesting or made any new friends?

❝ Hmm?..❞ Ophelia trailed off her words, mulling over the statement of the anonymous interviewer before she squeaked, a soft sound of recognition as she caught on to their line of questioning.

❝ Oh! I suppose you mean on my silly little internet thing! ❞

Chuckling at the obviousness of the question that now sunk into her, Ophelia smiled broadly and continued. Setting down the knitting needles she had been using into her lap.

❝ Truthfully- I must admit, I have already been well acquainted with many of the souls of this facility. I believe I’ve been posted here for… 4— maybe 5 years? I would need to verify that number with my journals, but that would be my estimate.❞

❝ But— back to the subject at hand ❞ Clasping her hands together in a steeple, the excitement and joy in her voice both palpable and pervasive, slipping into each word like a ray of sunshine through closed blinds. ❝ this internet thing- it has been going very well! Though I don’t believe I’ve had the most colourful experience thus far, I have certainly had a pleasant one, and I am most thankful for it! ❞

❝ I spoke with this fine business gentleman, a mr. dado, and we spoke at length about a new business venture. He’s even said I can test his new product for him- which I cannot lie makes me feel rather excited! I can’t wait to see it come to fruition, and personally, I am simply dying to know if it works! ❞

❝ Oh, and Selene, my love— ❞ She clutches a hand over her heart, as though trying to still the beating of her heart and numb the ache of it in her chest. ❝ I have learned that she and my daughter, Poppy are on this internet contraption too— I received a letter from her the other day and oh, I couldn’t show, but it made my heart soar, ❞

❝ Of course- HE is also here, but not even he could sully my experience so far- I have just been having great fun! ❞

❝ I have even received messages from several mysterious strangers, and I also have learned that I can message individuals far above my position as well- and it is all most exciting, and I learn ever more by the day! ❞

#authors note: Ophelia has been in the foundation for WAAAAAY longer than 5 years- its just the foundation will only allow her to keep #journals that equate to a five year time frame at a time

[redjennies]

it would be really great if I could just be satisfied with anything.

#me externally: im just an easygoing fun loving gal. nothing matters so i dont take things seriously. #me internally: all i am is a neverending series of math equations and journals filled with essays with annotations and edits in the margins #me externally: lmao im such a virgo moon and mars #tess talks

[un-fixed--stars]

found a video essay breaking down Hobie from Across the Spiderverse. the person who made it is so wrong i started taking notes. half-serious in wondering how the uploader would feel about some friendly academic disagreement.

#ideal vibes would be academics sniping at each other across journals #but also vibes of two swordsmen who respect each other but are going to fight anyway #but also i know that tone doesn't come across easily #so i'm like #what if i message him #and be like #hey i like and respect your video #but you somehow used the completely wrong equations to come to the right answer #how would you feel about a response video #could drum up views for both of us

[random2908]

Somehow I ended up on a list of potential reviewers at one of the two major physics publication houses. And, I guess I consider it my civic duty to agree to review any paper that they send me that's within my expertise.

So now I'm reviewing a 22-page theory paper. 22 pages in publication format, where a typical paper is 4-5 pages and a long paper 7 or more. And it's theory so there are NO PICTURES. 22 pages of text and equations. This is probably 3/4 as long as my actual doctoral dissertation--except my doctoral dissertation was full of pictures. By word count it's probably about the same length.

#I feel like a very little child complaining about having to read 22 pages with NO PICTURES #but you know? that is insanely long #in book format rather than journal format this would be probably at least 60 pages #but it's got a lot of equations in it so it's going to feel even longer #figure each equation counts as an entire additional paragraph

[signeficunt]

the level of cognitive dissonance you'd need to be a drama channel on youtube is off the charts

#some of them are actually insane like they equate the shit they do to journalism and commentary #like most of them are just recapping stuff that happened on other social media platforms lets be real here #op

[hyruviandoctor]

I'm cancelling my Disney Plus subscription at the end of this billing cycle because this bundle is getting too expensive for something I barely use, so I guess I have to catch up on a bunch of MCU I've been putting off for the last year before I do that. Still got Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Loki S2, Secret Invasion, and probably some others.

I could try to catch up on Star Wars too, but that's the entirety of Clone Wars, Rebels, Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Andor, and whatever I'm forgetting.

I'm just going to a "I sub just for as long as it takes me to watch the things I care about" model for myself, and that unfortunately means I have to get a month of Netflix just to watch the rest of Stone Ocean. So I'm gonna catch up on a bunch of Netflix stuff I've missed over the years of not having it.

#I've been forcing myself to have TV time lately #which sounds silly but if I don't do it then I won't watch anything even though I really want to #because my brain now equates watching TV and movies to being too passive and therefore non-poductive and I'm trying to squash that #healing your brain sometimes means doing wild things that most people try to do the opposite of #anyway I'm also going to use this site more like it was intended: as a personal blog #obviously still going to do what I normally do #just expect to see more of me almost journaling like this #Tyler Talks #is my tag for personal posts so if you really don't care then mute that tag #but you're always welcome to interact with my personal posts that's why I make them posts