It's Briar! Hi! I'm an American werewolf and writer living in London. Website: briarripleypage.xyz Self-pubbed stuff on flameswallower.itch.io
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ive said this before but even well-intentioned cis people see transition as a luxury that is painful to revoke the rights for but not existential. i bet these hospitals would file lawsuits about this if it was about literally any other evidence-supported medical procedure
Holy shit, ok so it looks like online sellers are doing pre-orders for Sara! Go get it! bookshop.org/p/books/sara...
sword witch
Everything about this is bad
I think it would be better if more people could see that being a man and also refusing to do the bullshit society demands of men is just as challenging to patriarchy, hegemony, gender norms, etc. as refusing to be pinned down and settle in either womanhood or manhood.
as something intrinsic to manhood, maleness, in some cases even masculinity. Where there's a lot of interest in eg expanding the possibilities for nonbinary identification, but very little interest in, well, practically anything to do with men at all.
mannerisms, emotional expression, and fashion, we have a more expansive cultural idea of what women (and, in some contexts/places, nonbinary people) can be than of what men can be. I think there are a lot of trans guys who come up in queer contexts where this has been sort of passively internalized
yeah-- & I think this kinda. springs directly out of the really ridiculously narrow dominant definitions of manhood, where even cis guys can have their "man card" momentarily revoked for drinking a daiquiri. For better and worse, I think that in terms of gender presentation via tastes/preferences,
yeah, and tbh I think for people like Musk, male superiority is so assumed that "why would a woman prefer to be a man" doesn't seem like a real/valid question, while the perversity of "a man preferring to be a woman" is shocking and deserves inquiry
these guys can't be like "THIS is what's driving people to become trans!" and just ignore how much of the increase in visible trans people over the past 15 years has been white trans men
small son: foot! wet! wet foot me! his papa: how did you get your foot wet small son: time
They took me into the bardo of smoky lights, they said mr president we're gonna make you the hungriest ghost in the six realms of existence. Tremendous
i met anubis in the realm of the underworld, big strong guy by the way, had a dog’s head, i’m not so sure about that. and he said to me, mr president, you’ve got the heaviest soul we’ve ever weighed down here. can you believe it? they’ve never seen a soul that heavy in all of duat
Danza
Graham Linehan looks like this
it's definitely been clarifying for me insofar as, nope, looks like the nonbinary aspects of my gender are not just Cope for not passing that great + imposter syndrome about manhood; there is actually something there. but also, I can boil my gender down to "guy" in a lot of contexts, and it's Fine!
I think it's really valuable that there are people in the world to show us that being transmasc and a bit GNC (or even just clocky) does not mean that you Aren't Allowed to Just Be a Man. having thought a lot about it, I don't think I'd be happy being one of those people. but I respect them!
I’m a leftist, of course I know what bourgeoisie means!!! It’s that you went to law school, or order a latte
I think the worst part is the number of people in creative fields who don't truly want this, & know they don't truly want this, but feel they have no choice but to chase it anyway as it seems like their only path to financial solvency or security, or even their only path to having human connections
Some sad news. R.I.P. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Her estate is asking for help to settle final medical costs, if you're able.
man, people talking about famous YouTubers/internet personalities as though they know them personally is so deeply creepy “They are my NEMESIS” do they have any fucking idea who you are? “I know just what they’re going through” you don’t, that’s a stranger
yeah, it's really similar actually-- the intense, defensive dedication to something that has basically no benefits for you anymore and makes you feel like shit all the time
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and not super right wing or anything! and the impetus for this epic, years-long, life-ruining crashout was [checks notes] you were gently criticized for transphobia on a 1990s TV show you'd written? And you could easily and gracefully have just said "yeah, you have a point, but I've learned since?"
right, it's like the combination of...okay, so this has made your life immeasurably worse, it's made you miserable, you get angrier and more paranoid by the day, even other extreme bigots reject you as embarrassing and too big of a crank...and before this, you were very well-liked and successful!
I keep expecting him to get a prescription for like clomipramine and turn up six months later acting way more normal and just hating trans people an average amount
G. Linehan is one of those people who makes me think, "huh, in some cases I guess bigotry Can be a form of mental illness similar to OCD or paranoid delusions"
written down so as not to keep annoying people verbally about it
kept under wraps, and people are excited about it, especially given his age.
He's been scarce in public recently, and when he does appear he looks unwell & sometimes has mysterious marks or bandages on his hands/face. Some have speculated that recent posts on his social media accounts weren't really written by him. Basically, it seems like he has an illness that's being
everyone keeps asking if they can fuck the flag. and that's why i am promising, in the next 4 years, that this Labour government will deliver on the Great British public fucking the flag.
the delicate and tenebrous axis of "oblivious sorta/maybe-chaser who's also an egg and would definitely explode if you brought any of this up"
holden caulfield does not know what trans is and, if he learned what trans was, would immediately crash out hard about the intense feeling of yearning and recognition that had descended upon him
"it's a horrible painful shot in the stomach and you have to get a bunch of them" is a small price to pay for NOT DYING OF RABIES but that hasn't been true for decades, it's just 2-4 regular jabs in the arm over a couple of weeks, get it if you are bitten by a feral cat or find a bat in your house.
my brother and I have started, I think, one bar fight apiece in our lives, but sometimes I'm kind of shocked the number isn't higher
I'm in the same boat, except that being mean/grouchy has ALWAYS been my go-to/feels like I can't help it default, after "try and pretend to be fine." Unfortunately, it's also ineffective (everyone's pissed off at you now and wondering what your problem is, they do not leave you alone)
The Last Unicorn is my favorite book hands down and I'm so glad to read this. It is a failure of society that Peter S Beagle has suffered elder abuse while She who shall not be named is living in luxury.
this is the ur- falsehood of our political era and everything from "schools shouldn't have locked down during covid" to "trans women in sports is a national crisis" are downstream of it and the through line of all of them is national media's willfull ignorance and complicity
at no point did we defund the police. it's important when we talk about defunding the police to note it never actually happened. would it work? we don't know! but merely phrasing the idea succinctly incited a reactionary backlash that put fascists in charge of all 3 branches of government. curious!
Dude is on that Ignatius Reilly shit with this one, incredible. ...yo would Ignatius Reilly be a chaser? My money is on him knowing of some obscure medieval practice and spurning us for our modernity. Like, he wouldn't respect us unless we were drinking pregnant mare piss.
remember when we had a 9/11 death toll a day for like a year straight because of covid. probably not cuz everyone stopped talking about it but its sorta insane to think about right
I have a solution to everyone being mad at each other about the hated UK/US food discourse part infinity: y'all ever heard of French Tacos? This is what they call a taco. They're everywhere. And I need to drop some knowledge on you: …they're also good
I think the best music writing comes from people on drugs
I was zonked on goofballs when I wrote this but I’m correct anyway!!!
they did a study where they put a fish into a mirrored bowl and left them there for years. the fish became wise, in the way that inescapable self reflection breeds wisdom. they then administered a number of cognitive tests on the fish, and learned that even a wise fish is still not very good at math
really wish I remembered more about City Of Glass besides "I liked it. I thought it was good." (in my defense, I read it in 2012 while drinking heavily)
when people look like they're drowning in their own skin, that's good, right? that means they're healthy?
I’ll haunt and gaslight you to ruin through the chatbot and not even because I feel particularly insulted. I just think you’re asking for it!
“don’t kys, one of your fuckass idiot relatives might make an AI of your corpse” is an even more potent suicide preventative than Logic’s fuckass idiot suicide hotline song. congrats everypony
* every time I see
Every time in this picture I think it’s some random t-boy on the left for a solid minute
If you're curious about the buzz... my novel is available from uhh multiple places 😁 I never feel like I can tell how my writing will go over with people so I'm glad a lot of the readers enjoyed it...
All of the characters are people where you’d be like “this is definitely the eccentric breakout character” in any other story. Half really progressive about disability, half cringe and ableist, one hundred percent committed to assigning metaphorical & spiritual significance to various disabilities.
Oh, please read it!! Absolutely wild novel. Written in Hugo’s later life, so suffused with leftist politics, albeit “1869 incredibly square and incredibly hetero-horny old white guy” leftist. He just kinda makes up a bunch of nonsense about English history & culture.
RON HOWARD VOICE: "They didn't."
Obviously this is a huge, huge driver of phenomena like hereditary eating disorders
They usually don’t know they’re doing it, or believe others can’t tell that they’re being Judged unless they’re also being insulted/nagged/overtly criticized, or are not As harsh on others as they are on themselves in a way they think makes it okay. But it’s still there!
I’ve noticed there’s a…sort of “hurt people hurt people” component to this as well. Most people who can be perfectionists— self included— are also overly harsh on others about the things they feel most stressed out by or are most afraid of
One of the biggest reasons people develop both perfectionism as an avoidance tactic and other forms of avoidant tactics is a history of not being allowed to fail, or being criticized for beginner efforts as if they’re not a beginner. Failing is good. Confusion is the default state of learning.
And hey parents: Remember: doing a thing badly is the start of learning to do it well. Your kid’s having problems with school? Don’t punish, find help that’s not you (because you are tired and will get frustrated because beginner’s mind is a hard state to get back into). Sports/art/music? PRACTICE.
questions about their specific identities, sexual histories, sex lives, gender presentations, bodies, tastes and preferences, etc etc etc. And it sure seems like they will use anything they conceivably can to delegitimize someone!
I also heard a story of a gay guy asylum seeker being similarly declared Not Really Gay because he presented pretty masc and didn't listen to Lady Gaga or Kylie Minogue, but I can't vouch for the accuracy of that one. I do know they ask queer asylum seekers a TON of both goofy & incredibly invasive
it's really, really terrible and stupid
Lest you say "it's not like that in the United States," I am currently representing a person facing criminal charges for - and this is true - saying "protect trans kids" during a school board meeting
This appeal got shot down too, despite some really intense statements from the asylum seeker, their friends, and their lawyer. I think most people in both the UK and US have misplaced their hearts and their brains.
people would *think* that they were gay, and that would pose a huge risk to them...and that being held in asylum seeker limbo + having claims denied for years had taken a toll on their mental health, which of course it had!
So because of this, the person's lawyer could not argue "you can't send a gay person back to a wildly homophobic country." Instead, the lawyer had to argue that this person had been so active in queer society and justice movements in the UK that if they went back to their own country
in homophobic environments as exclusively homosexual people are, if they are engaging in gay sex and relationships, also didn't matter. The UK government decided: if you've ever been married to or had relations with someone of the opposite sex for literally Any Reason, then you're Not Queer.
into a heterosexual marriage in their own country by familial and social pressure. the fact that this was a loveless marriage in which they eventually started cheating on their spouse with a partner of their own sex didn't matter; the fact that bisexual people exist and can be at just as much risk
something that is really going to stick with me forever is (following anecdote anonymized for privacy reasons) going to the asylum appeal hearing of a gay person from a homophobic country. apparently, the UK govt. had decided this gay person was "not gay"/actually straight (?) bc they'd been forced
(A combination of processing claims faster, reducing the number of appeals — by accepting more asylum claims in the first place — and allowing asylum seekers to work/access services while their claim is being processed would be the most progressive but also most effective policy. Labour will never.)
The second and third options would be much more humane — and in many ways much more practical! — but Starmer agreeing that it is normal *not to want to live near asylum seekers* is hardly creating an environment that would enable either of those routes to closing asylum hotels.
The first of those options is the most likely option. Conceding that racists have the right to push asylum seekers out of their community creates problems for this scenario as well! (It’s a terrible scenario that would also attract huge progressive pushback, fwiw; although the hotels are also awful)
Okay, you’re trying to close the hotels — but there are only 3 ways for that to happen: 1) house asylum seekers somewhere that isn’t technically a “hotel” eg an ex barracks; 2) process all the backlog and process new claims so fast you don’t need mass housing; 3) allow people to work during claims
This response absolutely accepts the premise that asylum seekers are definitionally, what, pedophiles and sex offenders? It is *wild* that he didn’t push back against this.
Starmer saying that protesters are worried for the safety of their children and not saying their kids aren’t actually at risk is disgusting. Horrible little man
Here is a good video about them with a lot of pictures/paleo art: www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0O5...
You can't see it as well in the icon as I'd like, but I really wanted to get the long, reaching arm in there!
This model is in a museum in Basel, Germany. I just yoinked the photo off the Wikipedia page for Anisodon lol
New week, new icon! This is a model of Anisodon, a member of the extinct perissodactyl family Chalicotheriidae. Modern perissodactyls include horses and tapirs. Chalicotheres were sort of like gigantic gorilla-horses: they had huge, powerful front limbs with clawed hands which they used in foraging.
let’s hit pause here. rfk jr. wasn’t picked until november 14, 2024. most folks in politics thought it wouldn’t happen, while public health was ringing alarm bells many former cdc directors spoke out against him before before everyone else realized he was a serious threat
I mean, whom amongst us hasn't bought a church for someone, developed a secret crush, attempted to commit a murder, then written a book about the experience.
So people who’ve fled death & torture are going to be denied the chance to live with their families- who may themselves consequently be exposed to the same dangers- and I’d suggest not a single Reform voter will vote Labour as a result while other Labour voters will abandon them in disgust
this goes crazy
damn Mafalda
A message from my friend Tasneem: “The situation in Gaza is catastrophic, my friend. They bombed the outpatient clinic at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah now. The bombing is very close.” Please give to Tasneem, so she can take care of her children, and help others. 💕 tinyurl.com/Tasneemo
This is scary as hell, but for news coverage? This is a GIFT. "You can be banned for *buying* Game of Thrones." Send emails to journalists and news sites and communities you're a part of and talk about the dangers here. People are going to care about this a lot more when it's not just creators.
Illinois is currently exploring the possibility of purchasing Covid-19 vaccines in bulk straight from manufacturers to make sure everyone will still have access.
Yeah it’s in my dick even though my urethra is Not in my dick
*He* was an anansi goatman. *She* was a fleshgait. Together they must hunt and devour Dan, who is on his first thru-hike. Coming to a theatre near you: GOATGAIT
I like to imagine that George Costanza is in the very center of the spectrum between goatman and fleshgait. He could slide into your friend group and all of you will have a single extremely vague memory of him like "oh yeah he lived on my couch last year"
An anansi goatman is content as long as no one bothers counting how many people there are in the group. A fleshgait really, really needs you to remember that you have known each other for years.
An anansi goatman just waves its hand and goes "I am with you guys" A fleshgait goes "I am your good friend Steve. Remember that time we lived together in college?"
A fleshgait is more intrusive. You know Bob, you have memories of drinking schnapps and playing tekken with him in college. Last year you visited him in the hospital and- oh oops, Bob doesn't exist
An anansi goatman will hang out with you and your friends, casting just enough glamor that none of you ever goes "wait who is this guy?"
Fleshgait stories are interesting, they are similar but not quite the same as anansi goatmen. The big distinction is the degree of integration with the group.
I don't get how people don't realize that a technology that replaces junior and entry level positions in a field destroys that field. There's no skipping steps. You have to be a junior before you can be a senior, and if you don't have senior people, you don't have a field.
Of course, this isn’t to say people typically interpret me as a cis woman with no real tits and chest hair. But they don’t typically interpret me as a cis man, either, or if they do it’s specifically as the kind of cis man who’s feminine enough to raise Gender Questions