Crossing Many Rainbows

fuckyeahftms:

I’m dating a pre-everything trans ftm and I was wondering if there were any suggestions on how to make him feel as manly and comfortable as possible during sex. Thank you :)

Ask him.

Seriously, though, suggestions and solutions within a given community are not one-size-fits-all.  You might get some good suggestions on things you can try, but please talk to him about sex first and about any suggestions you receive.  What’s helpful for one person might be a massive dysphoria trigger for another.

Generally, the best thing you can do when you’re unsure is ask questions, and if you’re not comfortable with or not capable of talking during sex, talk about it beforehand, and keep the discussion open in case anything changes.

bodark:

goat—milk:

Not one of them is even familiar with ancient mythology and just believes whatever distortion of it the 20th century shat out.

For instance, no otherkin elves are of the original folklore variety. If you see an otherkin saying they’re an elf that was a tall, thin, pointy-eared, immortal tree-hugger, then remind them that Tolkien made that version up. If you see an otherkin claiming to be a faerie that wasn’t a demon that terrorized people gave human sacrifices to, then that’s the Disneyfication of original faerie myths.

Sounds like you haven’t done that much research into ancient mythology yourself if you want to claim the original view of fae is a demon.  Check out some pre-Christian Irish religion at some point.  The Aos Sí, Tír na nÓg, and associated beliefs are much closer to Tolkien’s elves and the Undying Lands than the later demonizations that you’re talking about.  Sounds like Tolkien did more research to write his epic than you did to write this rant.

Er, OP, you do know that Tolkien was a scholar in Norse/Germanic mythology, right?  And that the Elves he wrote about were heavily influenced by the Alfar?  And that there are five million different versions in five million different mythologies of races/species that could be labelled as “elves” or “faeries”, depending on who you ask and where the translation came from?

Before you lecture us about doing our research, do some of your own, thanks.

It’s rare that I have dreams in which my body is different from what it physically is, unless I’m dreaming that I’m someone else.  And those are fun, but usually not dysphoria-triggering, even when I’m dreaming I’m somebody whose body I would rather have (even just for a while).

But on the rare occasion, I’ll have a dream that makes me dread opening my eyes because I want to stay in it, and it’s rarer still that I’ll wake up from a dream that, for all its dream logic and other strangeness, felt so real that I have to take a breath before pressing a hand to my chest to see whether my body is the same or changed.

And I have never had a dream in which my body was…for lack of a better word, perfect.  Not until last night.

It’s been messing with me all evening.

Oh well.  One of these days, I’ll have money for top surgery, and then things will be fine.  I’m swaying on whether I even want FtM chest reconstruction, or if I just want a breast reduction.  I feel like I’m moving further and further away from being “really” trans*, whatever that means…but I think the whole “trans* enough” thing is horrendously internalised for a lot of us.  

If you’d asked me a year and a half ago (christ, has it been that long already?), I’d have said yes, I want to go on T, I want top surgery, I want to change all my gender markers, I want to use male pronouns and I want to have a male name, I want to be a guy.  Then I decided that maybe I didn’t want to go on T, because the changes I wanted didn’t balance the ones I didn’t.  Then I decided that maybe gender-neutral pronouns would be better.  Then I decided (very, very recently) that I don’t want a male name, and the one I’m using now with my friends, I don’t want anymore, which is fine because nobody who’s aware of my gender stuff knows what name to call me—and fuck, I don’t know what to call myself.

And now?  I think I don’t even want top surgery, not to have a “male” chest, anyway.  I think a reduction would be fine.

Either I’m getting more comfortable with my body and my gender, or I’m getting more scared, or I’m just getting more lazy.  I don’t know which, or what would be the preferable option.

Dysphoric or not, I kind of feel like not knowing might be okay.  I’ll figure it out eventually.

houseofthornes:

Preferably lullabies, and other songs that you might sing to children.

English translations aren’t necessary but I need to know what the song’s about. -Astor

anshinwrites:

If you think that someone’s identity/experiences are invalidated by a lack of scientific evidence to back them up

If you think that it’s okay to mock/harass/threaten people because you don’t believe in their identity

If you think that science is an infallible end-all, be-all to the universe

If you think that being an atheist makes you intellectually superior to anyone who isn’t an atheist

You know where to find the unfollow button.  Get the hell off of my blog.

alias-pseudonym:

so.  I just got back from a university trip to Bamfield, British Columbia, which is the coolest marine sciences facility on the west coast at least, possible in all of north america or the world.  i saw a lot of incredible creatures and plants and tiny things somewhere in between the two, and coming away from that i have a pretty positive feeling about science in general.

this post is a response to everyone who argues against people’s identities, whether they be gender or sex related.

(period, line break, heaven forbid i mention trans and otherkin in the same paragraph)

species related, multiplicity or whatever.

You are doing science wrong.

when you deny something like otherkin you are saying, essentially ‘X CANNOT EXIST BECAUSE X IS OUTSIDE MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.’  you are saying that a person who looks human cannot actually be a cat because it is immediately obvious to you that they are human.  this is a personal incredulity response and for an ordinary person doing ordinary things it’s not surprising and can be forgivable.

For a scientist, rejecting something based on personal incredulity is simply wrong.

a scientist is skeptical, which is why they experiment, but the task of the scientist is to reserve judgement.  do not assume.  do not prejudge.  experiment and ALWAYS keep an open mind to the possibility that anything and everything you know might be proven wrong.  more, being a scientist usually means being kind of excited about the idea that you could be proven wrong.  the unknown, the strange, the alien, the dark, these things should not frighten the scientist.  instead they pull like a magnet, because they are new.  traditionally people cling to the old, but science is at its core radically progressive, always willing to cast aside the old model in favour of one incrementally closer to truth.

i’ve said that science has nothing to do with identity, but that’s not strictly true.  it’s true that science has no say on the validity of a given identity, but science is curiosity personified, is the drive to know and understand everything, and there can’t be a thing that exists that it is not interested in.

the appropriate response for a human identified scientist upon encountering otherkin is not incredulity but fascination.  the only way you can study the phenomenon is to ask questions.  not loaded questions, but legitimate questions.  ask ‘how can you identify as non-human in a human body,’ not as an attack but out of genuine curiosity.  if you really want to know things, do a survey, ask lots of otherkin how they feel about themselves and their existence.

if you feel scared or threatened by things outside your personal experience, i understand, but do not attribute your feelings to science; they are contrary to the essence of scientific inquiry.

in conclusion:

Every time you claim that a thing is false because your opponent in an argument cannot cite scientific studies in support of it, you are insulting science.  you may cite your own studies to disprove a claim, but absence of evidence proves nothing.

Motherfucking word.

(I feel as though I should have something slightly more articulate to say, but no, this is a good post and you should feel good so I’m just gonna reblog it.)

nixiefangs:

Okay, so, my S.O. and I are very, very low on funds (like, literally, we’re both broke), and our living situation is far from optimal—I’m living with zir since I can’t move back in with my mom, but zir father does not like having me in the house and is being a passive-aggressive asshole about it, not to mention neither of us are out in any way to zir parents, we don’t have ritual space or really any space at all, and it’s starting to wear on us both.  So we need moneys.  Pretty badly, in fact.

In light of that, would anyone be interested in commissioning me to write them something?  I like to think of myself as a pretty decent writer.  Poetry or short story, either way, I do both.

• If you want a poem, it’ll be US$5 base, and depending on how long it is we’ll negotiate more if necessary.
• A short story will be US$10 base, and depending on length we’ll negotiate, as above.

I’ll post a sample of my writing on this blog in a bit; I just need to find some of it first.  ^^;;

Contact me through my ask box if you’re interested.

If you can’t commission me for whatever reason, I’d really appreciate a signal boost!

Just gonna casually drop this over here, since this lovely aquatic fae is my girl. <3  And I can attest to the fact that she is a fucking amazing writer, no lie, you will not regret commissioning her.

TW: menstruation, trans* exclusion, cissexism, angry swearing

I was going to reblog and make a much longer post about it, providing a point-by-point rebuttal to this post, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that a point-by-point isn’t necessary, because it comes down to two things:

1. By making a space for cis women only on the basis of “safe space” and on the idea that being a so-called “genetic woman” is the same as other exclusionary rites within various pagan groups, you’re basically saying that trans* women aren’t real women and don’t deserve the same safe spaces (further points in the article basically say that trans* people should have their own safe space, which…is incredibly othering, and does that whole Male/Female/Transgender thing that I fucking hate seeing on websites that are trying and failing to be inclusive).  If you wanna have a group that does, say, menses magic, great, go for it, but don’t fucking call it “women’s magic” if you’re going to exclude women on the basis of trans* status.  First of all, not all “genetic women” even menstruate; are you going to start excluding them, too?  Or do they get a free pass just for being cis?  Second of all, not all people who menstruate are women, and it’d be great if they could participate if they wanted to, but you’re just gonna exclude everyone who isn’t a cis woman because they aren’t cis. That isn’t having “requirements and exclusions” the same as any other ritual; that’s being discriminatory asshats.

2. I swear to god I had a two but then I got angry ranting up there and forgot it.  Fuck it.  I give.  I’m gonna go flip a table.

henhazel:

She’s been hacked. DO NOT PUT YOUR INFORMATION INTO THE BOX THAT COMES UP AT HER BLOG. 

19. Is being non-human spiritual for you?

I’ve been working on posting this one for a couple of days now, and I keep coming back to it with no better answer than I started with.

The answer is sort of yes and no, and it depends entirely on what’s meant by “spiritual”.  Does it mean, do I believe that my spirit/soul/whatever is nonhuman and that’s what makes me what I am?  If so, then the answer is yes.  Does it mean that it’s a religious-spiritual thing for me?  If so, then the answer is not really.

I think my nonhuman-ness probably influenced the religion I was drawn to, because it was after being introduced to Norse paganism that I realised the Alfar were the best possible fit for what I was—I’d known all my life that I was Elven, but other than LotR, which I…felt kind of uncomfortable for random reasons identifying with, I didn’t have anything to point at and say “yes, that’s it, that’s me”.  But after becoming a pagan and studying Norse mythology, I find that going back to the roots LotR came from is truer to who I am than going with the LotR thing, and it makes sense to me.

So in that regard, I guess it gets looped around.

In the former regard, as to whether I believe my soul is nonhuman, that’s absolutely true for me.  I mean, after all, I’m the stereotypical Reincarnated Elf. ;)