My copy of @drchucktingle’s book Camp Damascus has arrived! (The publishers were kind enough to send me an advanced copy when I mentioned that I had ordered a copy but time was not kind to me as it was Finish Good Omens and Wrap Things Up Before the Strike world, and I had no personal reading time. So I’m really looking forward to settling down to read it.)
let it be known that @neil-gaiman has been a true buckaroo from DAY ONE. always accepted my unique way and understood the sincerity of my trot and my art. thank you neil i appreciate you so much bud. i am humbled and honored by your support through the years. a buckaroo legend
stepped on a plum (overripe plum) (barefoot) it was on the driveway got out of the car and accidentally (didn’t know it was there) stepped on the plum (warm) (on the ground) (it had fallen from the tree) barefoot (no shoes) wearing long pants (too long) (need to hem them) plum viscera got on them (the pants) unexpected plum on the driveway (hot plum) (97 degrees out) already super hungover (throwing up all morning) (should not have been driving at all) and I stepped out of the car (black car) (97 degrees out) and onto the plum (unexpected) (didn’t know the plum was there) and it burst (plum nightmare on my only good pair of sweatpants) still we find ways to keep ourselves going from day to day
Idk a lot of the backlash to broadening who falls under what terms comes from the need to distinctly fall under the specific label you worked towards…but distance from adjacent labels only limits your allies and puts you in a rigid box you can’t come back out of either.
Saw a post by a trans woman horrified by the concept of having overlapping experience with femboys because “fuck you I am a woman.” You are. A woman with a lot of overlapping experience with a GNC man. You’re not a GNC man. He’s not a woman. And the gap between you two is not a chasm.
“How dare you say trans men are similar to butch lesbians. Trans men are men.” Yeah, men with similar experiences to butch lesbians. The butch lesbian isn’t a man. You aren’t a woman. And the gap between you is not a chasm.
This mindset doesn’t even account for GNC men who also ID as women, trans men who use the label of lesbian. Butch can be a label for a person of either AGAB.
Binary trans people wanna separate themselves from each other and from nonbinary people sooo bad. Now it makes eggs feel like the jump from GNC woman to man is an insurmountable journey. A femboy gets told he’s making a mockery of trans women’s experiences. A transmasc femboy is seen as just a faker. A butch trans lesbian is seen as a faker.
These labels are all just plots on the map, not one side or the other. You journey to the farthest edges and you find twinks and lesbians who look and act identical despite being supposed opposites. It’s all made up, we’re all queer.
the thing is also that the experiences of cishet men and cishet women are not categorically opposite either! the belief that genders exist as distinct and EXCLUSIVE categories of being is the underpinning of heteronormativity, where you define yourself in opposition to everyone outside your own arbitrary category. and that’s just not how humans are. my experience in transitioning from woman to man bore this out: women and men have a LOT of thoughts, feelings, and experiences in common, which is precisely why there’s such a narrow focus on the (imho few) differences.
you are your gender because that’s what you’re doing with yourself. it’s absolutely a personal thing you get to chose and define. but you’re a lot more like other genders than you are different. finding solidarity and commonality with different people won’t erase your unique identity , but it WILL gain you a wonderful community.
some time ago, i was surprised to discover that my own experiences and cultural background of life in a post-soviet state have a lot in common with experiences of my friend, who’s chinese. as it turns out, communism is fairly similar across the board. there are things we grasp immediately that i know a british person would struggle to understand.
the longer i live, the more common experiences i find with people i expected to have absolutely nothing in common with.
