this is my life Archives | Page 8 of 11 | Queer As Cat

[Random] Thoughts, Queer[ness]

hats. hats. hats.

December 26, 2016 / No Comments

queerascat: …you know you have a problem when 3 out of the 4 hats that you own are exactly the same hat in exactly the same colors (black / gray / white) just in different patterns / materials. to be fair, though, the latest (solid black) one was half the price of the others despite being the same brand and everything, so of course i’m going to buy it. i mean, solid black is my thing– if anything, you’d have thought it’d have been the first hat i’d have bought, right? hmph. ;( more random thoughts about hats because i’m exceptionally longwinded tonight, apparently. …is it odd that i only got into hats once my hair started falling into “wow, your hair’s long feminine!” category in people’s eyes? like, before that i never even really gave hats any thought. now it’s almost like i feel a need to wear a hat…

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Vesper H.

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TFW Train Queering™

December 23, 2016 / No Comments

tfw reading queer theory late at night on the train ride back home after a non-binary / trans end-of-the-year party in Tokyo.

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Vesper H.

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mission Read All The Queer Manga

December 18, 2016 / No Comments

ended up at Tsutaya today thanks to this post and what a haul! mission Read All The Queer Manga will continue this winter vacation with: 「一人交換日記」 / “Exchange Diaries” by 永田カビ / Kabi Nagata 「しまなみ誰そ彼」/ “Shimanami Tasogare” by 鎌谷悠希 / Yuhki Kamatani turns out that “Exchange Diaries” was just released two days ago, so perfect timing…! it’s a follow-up to my favorite comic essay 「さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ」 / “The Private Report On My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness” (translation not mine) which i read a while ago and meant to write a post about, but never got around to. in brief, it’s an autobiographical comic essay about suddenly finding oneself lonely but completely inexperienced with relationships or intimacy at 28 years old, but at the same time having no actual drive for sex and not understanding why that is so going to a lesbian brothel because hell, what if i’m a lesbian??? it’s more complicated than…

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Vesper H.

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aventuroj elŝrinkiĝante ktp esperante

December 17, 2016 / No Comments

back in October i was contacted by an esperantist from Madagascar who’d just come to my city for a year as part of a scholarship program. we arranged to meetup at a restaurant and ended up talking about random shit for literally 4 hours, which was great because it’d been a while since my not-that-social ass had talked to anyone in Esperanto offline, but damn. she is so talkative and i’m… not the most talkative person. anyway, i never intended to come out to her or anything, but i also had no intention of actively avoiding it either and yeah. how it ended up happening and how things have gone so far has been vaguely interesting, so commence word vomit. (ĉi tiu blogaĵo estas anglalingva, sed mi esperantigos ĝin se iu tion deziras.) that night when we’d met at the restaurant i randomly mentioned at some point that i had…

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Vesper H.

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めんどくささレベル5強

December 11, 2016 / 1 Comment

one of my least favorite things to do is attempt to explain in Japanese to a (usually LGB) cisgender Japanese person that: 1. no, セクシャリティー / “”sexuality”“ is not the same thing as gender. they usually get it once i explain it, but it’s still ugh because that inevitably spills over into: 2. no, オネエ / “onee” and / or ニューハーフ / “newhalf” is not synonymous with “transgender” and then when i use the word トランスジェンダー / lit. “transgender” from English– because i refuse to use any of the other Japanese words available– the person i’m talking to automatically thinks of ニューハーフ / “newhalf” (if i’m lucky) even when i’m not talking specifically about women who happen to be trans. i hate how bothトランスジェンダー / transgender and 性同一性障害者 / people with gender identity disorder– the most common way to refer to trans people in general– seemingly always make people think…

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Vesper H.

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on perpetual exhaustion

December 4, 2016 / 2 Comments

that feel when someone asks you how you are and you respond saying that you’re “tired”, knowing full well that they’ll take what you said differently from how you meant it. but that’s okay. because you’re fucking tired. you don’t have the energy to do anything about their understanding of the word anyway. hell, you yourself may not even know what kind of tired you are that day. are you depressed tired? are you anemic tired? are you queer tired? are you gaslighted tired? are you black tired? are you expat tired? are you anxious tired? are you one of the Many Other Kinds of tired? are you All Of The Above And More tired? ah yes, that’s right. you are a unique concoction of All The Above And More tired, further compounded upon by having to persevere through life as if you aren’t actually tired at all. when life…

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Vesper H.

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QAC 55.5 – Life Update: Post-Election Mental Health | Staying In Japan | Outted To Dad

November 23, 2016 / No Comments

two weeks ago any vague plans that i’d had for my immediate future were abruptly shattered when America elected Trump as the next president of the United States. two weeks later, i’m still struggling to cope with the news and the resulting blow to my already poor mental health. in this video, i give voice to my thoughts on being forced to navigate HRT in Japan and forgo (for the time being) other gender-related medical things that i’d hoped to pursue in America. i also talk about possibly moving to Tokyo in a year’s time, having been outted to my dad via Twitter and a new book by Ashley Mardell that i highly recommend. longass video is long, so here are some jump points for those of you only interested in specific things. @00:00 – post-election mental health @03:50 – shattered future; staying in Japan @08:55 – name change, HRT…

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Vesper H.

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“Dyke Deck” by Catherine Opie

November 20, 2016 / No Comments

…so somehow this vintage deck of lesbian-themed playing cards made it all the way from Los Angeles to a christmas market in middle-of-nowhere Japan and into my hands today. [“Dyke Deck” by Catherine Opie] were sold at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles but are SOLD OUT. Includes 52 playing cards, 2 jokers, instruction sheet, and case. Opie created this humorous deck to explore the issue of the lesbian body in photography. Many of the women in the photos are friends of Opie’s while others came to an open call in San Francisco. In the “Dyke Deck” Opie divided up the imags into four categories to correspond with the four suits: couples are hearts, jocks are clubs, femmes are diamonds and butches are spades. as a lover and enthusiast of black & white photography and queer person myself, this feels a bit like that thing some people call “fate”?…

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Vesper H.

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…today America elected Donald Trump as president.

November 9, 2016 / No Comments

…today America decided for me that i can’t “come home” for at least another 4 years. i might not have anyway, but at least the option was there. there’s a lot of talk of people wanting to leave America. i get that. i said the same thing living in America when Bush was elected. if only i’d known that leaving America doesn’t actually mean escaping it. not like i’d thought, anyway. next year will be my 10th year of living abroad. i never imagined i’d ever live abroad at all let alone for as long as i have, but the longer i do the harder it becomes to envision a life back in America again. even so, 4 more years on top of the time i’ve already spent abroad puts me that much closer to having spent half of my life abroad… but perhaps that doesn’t even matter, because after today…

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Vesper H.

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…one of many examples of why navigating セクマイ / LGBTQIA spaces in Japan can be painful at times.

October 7, 2016 / No Comments

first the context: the above screenshot is from the registration form for a meetup that i’ll be attending that is exclusively for trans men and non-binary people who are AFAB who have not medically transitioned in any way. the meetup is being hosted by a group that itself is a support group for trans men and non-binary people who are AFAB and who have not medically transitioned in any way + their partners………..

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Vesper H.

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