two months after moving back to America from Japan, i've finally done what i've been dreaming about doing for years...! that is, cutting off my butt-length locs of 11 years-- i.e., the #BigChop...
thank you @gc2b-apparel for the awesome sale! and thank you to BetterHelp.com, who sponsored this video about online therapy. most of all, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who watched it and to those who went a step further and even gave BetterHelp a try, you are The Awesomest Awesome to ever Awesome. i want you all to know that it’s entirely thanks to you that i can even afford these new binders at all. after nearly 4 years of wearing the same binders, which don’t even really bind at all anymore– which in turn has caused me many “ffffff– gotta layer! ffffff– layering does nothing– FFFFF” days– it’s more than about time that i get new ones. upcoming binder review once they make it to Japan and i’ve had time to try them out? probably. perhaps what i’m looking forward to the most is seeing how Nude No. 2 looks against my skin…
anonymous said: This is probably a complex issue, so apologies in advance if I have to send multiple asks, but I’m white l, and recently I have been identifying as Maverique, it is the best way I’ve found to describe my gender and it sits very well for me, but I had someone who was a POC tell me it was appropriative of POC cultures and was basically just ‘white people taking it and making it okay to id as a third gender’ and, while I disagreed with them and it was very upsetting, (pt 1) I know it is not my place to argue with them over what is and isn’t cultural appropriation. I’m not really sure what to do, because they told me it would be racist of me to continue id’ing as maverique and that I should use neutrois or something similar instead, but neutral terms aren’t…
anonymous said: Hey! Thank you for defending us aporagender people even if it’s not your problem! Really, thank you so much. It felt like some posts were attacking us directly. Many of us are almost incapable of trying to fight back because the nature of the posts were becoming rather violent and, personally, they made me afraid of coming out as my gender in public. ( re: this post? ) no need to thank me, anon. i’m just sorry that the incessant ‘discourse’ (to use le mot à la mode) that always seems to come and go on this site regarding maverique / aporagender / aliagender and “third gender” has caused you and others so much distress… whether i be aporagender myself or not, it is still very much my problem and has been since before either “maverique” or “aporagender” were coined. furthermore, as someone who has weathered multiple reiterations…
nearly a year ago i sat down for an interview with the amazing Dandy of @dotellpodcast, a podcast that was created to make a safe space for queer people of color to tell their stories. each week a new episode featuring someone’s intensely personal story is released and this week’s episode is mine. while i certainly wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any one of the other episodes of the #DoTell Podcast, especially to fellow QPOC looking to hear the stories of other QPOC, i can’t help but feel obligated to forewarn you that my episode is fifty-some-odd minutes of me quite literally spilling my guts to the world… and i absolutely will not be offended if you find my guts to be uninteresting and would prefer to tippy-toe through it. as such, here are few jump points? 00:00 ~ introduction 03:34 ~ how i ended up in Japan 05:01 ~ dysfunctional…
anonymous said: (suicide ideation, death threat and conversion tw) i found an old post about a poc ace and went on their blog and they know say they don’t identify as ace because aces are bad, basically. and like, i’m literally crying. idk what to do, that just really struck me. someone who wrote about being queer, ace and a poc like me shitting on me and telling me my identity is inherently problematic when it’s the reason i can’t access mental health atm, which is something i need cause the ‘discourse’ & the violent abuse i faced on this website for, including death threats, caused me to fall back into suicidal ideation. and the only therapist available to me suggested conversion therapy (i live in a small central american country, there’s not much knowledge about these things- she thinks if i can be converted to straight, i will no…
Life would be easier if it came with a guidebook. If it did, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me 27 years to realise that I didn’t actually have to subscribe to society’s assertion that everyone is either male or female. At the very least, ripping the book to shreds in a fit of rage would have made for great stress relief. Then again, had there been such a book I probably wouldn’t have grown up to be the person that I am today and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Hello, my name’s Vesper. I’m a 31 year old non-binary person who’s here today to tell you that gender is a much more beautifully complex thing than society would have you believe. That some people, such as myself, are neither male nor female but a different gender(s) entirely […] the blog post that i wrote for Ditch The Label…
all too often i see people making appeals to science— more specifically biology — to try and legitimize their argument that race, gender or whatever else doesn’t really exist. in fact, i come across such arguments so often that such arguments have become a pet peeve of mine. so yeah, you can bet i got really angry when someone recently tried to justify doing blackface to me with “but race is a social construct and doesn’t exist anyway. we’re all the same race— the human race!” and was praised by thousands for her “bravery.” *drops the “angry black person” mic*
this post was triggered by three posts (tw: violence) posted recently by @nonbinary-support arguing against the use of aporagender, which has in turn triggered even more posts about race and gender.
as 2015 comes to an end, it’s time for my annual photo dump. i usually post my annual photo dump elsewhere on the web (i have far too many blogs), but as i was tagged on here by @bi-gray, i figure i’ll post the selfie portion of it on this blog for once. i am going to ignore the rules of the Tumblr meme, though, and post more than 6 photos. i also won’t be tagging anyone because i suck at that. instead, i welcome everyone to take the chance to reflect upon the past year through selfies or photos in general. 🙂 for me, 2015 was a year of working on my left sleeve (which took 9 months to complete), parking myself in various cafes for hours, doodling random stuff, embracing smartphone photography à la Instagram and continuing to learn more about myself while learning to be proud of…
