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honestly, I've said on here for years and years that my own understanding of myself as nonbinary, as butch, is an understanding that while I feel alienated from femininity and womanhood, I do not experience or seek acceptance within masculinity or manhood to an even greater degree.

if you want to get kind of hyperspecific with it, I'm both "woman" (insofar as the political construction of gender within patriarchy places me currently and in the past) and "not woman" (insofar as I am in a state of being pushed and pulled within that).

I am pushed out because I am a dyke, because I do not conform to the gender of woman (when I was younger I failed at the performance, and now I refuse it), because I am noticeably "other" around cis women (and have been since a child-- in fourth grade the entire class of girls came together to coerce me into getting my ears pierced and buying clothes in "girl colors" and wearing make-up. fourth grade! I was not allowed to have sleepovers with girls until I did these things which was enforced by a girl bully who would literally walk to my house to make sure no one visited me), and pulled in through my experiences of 'corrective' gendered/sexual violence (years of homophobic/transphobic/misogynistic abuse by a cishet man, sexual harassment at various workplaces, etc.), through misgendering (people refusing to use my pronouns, etc.), through medical gatekeeping (years of being denied a deeply desired gender affirming surgery), etc.

once on here I think I described my gender as like a thaumatrope of "woman" and just something else. (a thaumatrope is basically an optical illusion achieved by having two different images on either side of a piece of paper, and using string on either side to flip the paper back and forth so rapidly that it appears to be one image).

in some ways I still feel like that. my gender (insofar as gender is a social construct and my gender is described as my experience of how I am gendered socially) isn't a stable category-- it is the constant motion of being expelled from womanhood and then forcibly pushed back in. like that IS my gender, the very motion of it.

no where in that is actually masculinity. a lot of things about how I handle dysphoria can be read as masculine by some (I often bind my chest, use a packer, wear men's clothes, keep my hair short, have no uterus and thus will never be pregnant, I'm starting a low dose of testosterone, etc.) but these things are not inherently masculine attributes to me, they are just comfortable and reassuring. they make me feel at home in my body.

and so, I very much do not identify as "masc" or "transmasc" or "masculine." I understand there are many butches who do identify as masc or masculine. I understand there are many nonbinary tme folks who see themselves as somewhere between "woman" and "man" or perhaps some combination of both. I know there's lots of transmasc folks who might have quite a few life events in common with me. obviously that's all cool and good and neither of our paths with that invalidates the other's. but I think maybe the difference is in how those experiences landed for us in relation to our gendered desire, in relation to how we want to be treated.

I have never wanted to be a man or to be treated like one. when I am pushed out of womanhood, I never attempt to get to manhood, I just sort of agree that I'm a categorical error and feel no need to change something about myself to address it. when I am pulled back into womanhood with various forms of misogynist violence, I never find myself thinking "I wish I was a man so I was not subject to this" or "they would not subject me to this if they perceived me as a man," I only think "I wish I was not subject to this."

if there's anything I desire with regard to others' gendered perception of me, it is a desire to just be allowed to exist.

#thank you this yes

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#i am #so visible #awooo or smth

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A lesbian should always have money for their trinkets, their projects and their countless books on theory.

#as a dyke not giving me money for these things is a hate crime #1. buy things for girlfriend #2. crafting materials #3. outings and treats #4. pay for weird art

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I’m bored and nosy. Please reblog this with the book you’re currently reading.

#tomboy survival guide by ivan coyote #runaway to the stars by jay eaton #and #bright dead things by ada limón

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Kk we're just gonna have to be more feminist and belligerent, like if you think you're being rough now, be rougher. Black women, trans women, lesbians and all those who intersect... It's time to start biting ppl

#louder mx yah yah #house that other houses built

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I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.

If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.

#talita talita talitaaaaaaaaaa #talita my beloved #rtts #yall gotta read runaway to the stars #it gave me rabies #reblog #and all the little lights

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feeling misanthropic drawing that paw patrol dog getting what he deserves

#this isn't misanthropy this is pure love for the people #house that other houses built #óolajil kaajal

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another deranged drawing from my demented mind

#every minute i'm alive i create 10 new transsexual butches by presence alone #if we keep going the world can be perfect

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I’m gnashing my teeth like a child of Cain

If this is a prison I’m willing to bite my own chain

#the colorssssssss #yes thank you i love it #and all the little lights

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More and more I'm convinced that real love is about the specificity of the beloved.

If you see a person as an interchangeable pleasing companion with which you can have interchangeable pleasing interactions, you may enjoy that experience, but it won't be love.

Delighting in the weirdness of another is the seed of love! Because then it's about the specific person and all their specific passions and habits and mannerisms. That person becomes less and less interchangeable as you know them more and more and learn about every unique, endearing, deeply specific part of them.

And sure, it's just a seed until you water it and tend it and give it plenty of light and soil—but the seed is essential for anything to grow.

If you think you love someone, but there's nothing specific to them that's important, if they feel kind of interchangeable to you, that's really not love. Love isn't about the services the beloved provides or how well they conform to aesthetic preferences.

Real love means appreciating the complexity and specificity of the person in front of you, more and more and more, until they're utterly irreplaceable to you as an individual. Until it's obvious that any future love couldn't possibly trace the exact same path because this love is specific to this one completely unique person.

#this is it #it's about *you* #house that other houses built

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I hate when I crave and want and desire like girl if you don’t shut the fuck up and stare at the wall

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Darling you're iconic for this you will always be famous @octombre

#truly fearless #fr iconic

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Art to appease the frutiger metro gods

#look at ittt #it's so specific and so so special #reblog #and all the little lights

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My bones ache from the love I carry

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a huge thank you to all of you who have grown complacent and blase about seeing brown people being bombed

our dehumanization wouldn’t have been possible without you

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🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

#from the river to the sea #am falastin chai #house that other houses built

[alicornairport]

I do feel like there's a way in which some people who, for whatever reason, cannot understand lesbians will attempt to understand us by projecting themselves and their experiences onto us, and then get upset because they are not lesbians and would not want to live our lives. like instead of being able to imagine a life in which they do not desire relationships with men in any way (romantically, sexually, or even necessarily platonically-- not that we don't have men as friends but that friendship with men is not something that we specifically need to feel happy or complete, like it's whatever, cool if we meet someone chill but not something we necessarily go out of our way to find) they imagine desiring relationships with men but then forsaking these relationships or abstaining from them due to trying to conform to a politic or identity label (<- not what being a lesbian is) and then imagine lesbianism to be a restrictive and harmful identity that limits behavior. it seems like to some there's just this psychological barrier to understanding it as authentic instead of a performative set of rules, and it leads to a lot of weird takes where people think lesbians need to be "reassured" that "it's okay to like men" and it's like.. we know it is, we just don't. like it's not a rulebook, we're not denying ourselves anything, it's just an honest description of our experience. I'm not like constantly suppressing any part of myself or denying myself anything, I'm just vibing.

#yup #i just don't feel like rewarding the entitled blandness of 90% of men with the constant awareness and attention they expect #won't put myself thru that #bcs for what #a man? #i'm not even like #throwing every individual man into the fire #(tho i sometimes wanna ngl) #just #not prioritizing them #and even that is too much for most people #it's fucking exhausting #house that other houses built