Want To Learn Something New In 2022??

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

OUT NOW: my most in depth investigation yet

maia :3

#FuckStalkerware pt. 4 - the truth come out: does TheTruthSpy is secure

they had like two years to fix this shit, jesus christ

in this article we see just HOW little a company handling highly sensitive data can care about security and yes it's even worse than you think

content warning: mentions of abuse/controlling behaviour

support me on ko-fi if you like my work and want to read (non-hacking) articles early!

Proposing some intersex gender modality & transition terms

So there are a whole bunch of different ways that intersex people can be/identify as trans. I've been thinking about what names would be useful for articulating these differences and in this post I'll list what I've got so far. 🧑‍🔬

I'm hoping to get feedback on these, so if you have feedback let me know! 💛 I expect to edit this post, to incorporate feedback and further ideas.

CW: mention of IGM and forced HRT

Types of transitions

Distransition: a medical transition forced upon an intersex person, such as through IGM or forced HRT. Dis- to indicate the negative aspect of the transition being coercive, as well as to connote disability since this process is so frequently traumatic and/or disability-causing. In disability studies language it's a form of debility (disability caused through systemic violence).

Mistransition: a distransition (forced transition) that is not in alignment with a person's gender identity. Mis- to indicate the incorrectness of the alignment as well as to maintain a negative connotation because this is a coercive transition.

Entransition: a consensual transition done by an intersex person. Contrast to distransition. En- acts as an opposite to dis- and also to me indicates a level of intent (e.g. envision, enact, enliven). It also serves to indicate that transition is different for intersex bodies than for perisex bodies.

Retransition: an entransition done by an intersex person who previously had been distransitioned. I.e. when an intersex person does a second transition to undo, alter, or improve a forced transition. Re- to indicate a second transition, but also that it's a revision of the first one.

Retrotransition: a retransition that is done to undo the effects of forced transition. So an intersex person who, after being forced into a binary gender, then transitions their body towards a best approximation of what their body's natural state would have been without forced transition. Retro- for backwards to indicate undoing that is worth differentiating from detransitioning.

Laterotransition: a retransition done by an intersex person to a gender that is neither the gender externally imposed by a distransition nor what their body's "natural state" would be. For example, an AFAB AIS person who was coercively transitioned female, who then later transitioned male. Latero- as contrast to retro- (latero- is to the side, antero- is forward) as well as to indicate the turn away from the path set forth externally by parents/doctors.

Anterotransition: a retransition done by an intersex person that continues the direction set forth by previous forced transition. So additional transitioning done by somebody whose gender is in alignment with what was externally imposed. While this will probably be somebody's AGAB, it doesn't have to be - some times intersex people are forcibly transitioned to a different gender than their AGAB.

All of these transitions would have an analogous gender modality. So an entransgender person is somebody who has/is undergoing/intends to entransition. And a retrotransgender person likewise has/is undergoing/intends to retrotransition.

I see distransition and mistransition as potentially useful for intersex people talking about trauma and structural intersexism. I think entransition might be useful for talking about how being intersex and transitioning is frequently different than for perisex people, especially if it is a retransition. And perhaps distransition and anterotransition may be of use to exparium folks.

Personally: I was distransitioned as an adolescent and have recently started a process of medically retrotransitioning.

Feedback welcome! A list of revisions will go at the bottom of this post. Will make flags for terms once I feel satisfied with them.

Listen

Just read about the study that looked into the connection between the sound resonance of human-marked caves and the location of cave paintings. They discovered that the cave paintings were most commonly located in the areas with the clearest resonance, the best acoustics. The ideal places to sing. Scientist are bound by a duty to commit to facts, to stick with what is known and can be known. They aren't allowed to just wildly speculate, jump to conclusions, or romanticise the connections they make. But I am not a man of science and I can say whatever I want.

We called them "cavemen" at first, when we knew even less of them than what we do now. They were hunter-gatherers, nomadic people who wouldn't have stayed in one place for long, not even a place as good as a cave. A cave is a maw full of blackness, cold and dark, unless you bring fire. They brought fire with them, that we know. They painted the walls in light of torches, beasts that appear to move in the flickering light. They painted the walls in places where one could best sing.

A cave is a place of darkness, unless you bring fire. And quiet - perhaps save for the bats - unless you bring your voice. What did they sing about? The same songs every year, that one sings that time of year When We Return To The Cave, or new ones made up on the spot? Were they sacred? They must have been. One does not go into an unfamiliar cave alone, there are too many ways you may die. You go together, someone shows it to you. Brings you to the paintings to sing. To sing in the dark underworld that looks nothing like the world above, and where even the weakest voices carry, amplifying like nowhere else in the world that they knew.

Is that what we still yearn for? To go with your kin to the hollow halls of sacred places, where the echo compels you to reverent silence, until it's time to sing? To hear the familiar tune, amplified by the echos of stone, urged to join the song just as wolves are called to join the howl? Our urge just as natural as theirs, like migrating birds yearn to leave and return?

Why else do we have churches, but for our yearning to sing in the caves?

When trans women are mocked and made into jokes in the media, I get very upset, and I am often told “Kay, you can’t go through life getting offended every time someone makes a joke.” And I sputter and object but they don’t hear me. So I want to be clear for once, about why the jokes make me angry.

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself. And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men. And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.

That is, if she doesn’t kill herself first.