Tessa Thompson photographed by Nagi Sakai for PORTER
ANYWHO just watched a vine compilation and feel a lot better already!!
some thoughts:
-i dont wish ppl that i dont regularly talk to happy birthday on fb bc it takes too much mental energy and makes me feel fake and weird but then i also feel bad bc i do want to acknowledge their birthdays
-being home alone still makes me sad and hole-y. like im falling into a hole. when im home alone i cant do anything and i know it makes emery frustrated bc we have a lot to do and when im away from them they are just so productive but we function in different ways in that sense and i feel guilty about it but also im just not there yet and thats ok.
-it feels hard to imagine the rest of my life. i dont know what im doing past the next year, if i want to keep teaching in a charter school (or keep teaching at all), if i want to go back to school, if i can afford to do that and still live on my own….etc. and thinking about it just makes me very overwhelmed and anxious and contemplating big decisions/ideas like that makes me shut down and want to ignore/run away from it. im very good at pushing away tasks that make me uncomfortable (aka procrastinating) but then they build and build and end up making me even more anxious by the time im forced to confront them again.
-i cant tell if emery trusts me fully. i think they hold back a lot of thoughts and feelings from me and it actually really hurts me. maybe its not fair to say that but just typing out what i feel right now. last night i think i may have hurt them a lot but they didnt want to talk about it and im really bad at coping w that and it made me start rambling and be very needy and apologetic and then they had to be nice to me even though i did the thing wrong and i shouldve been comforting them. i feel very unsettled by it but i think emery wants to glaze over it and forget it happened. i worry that it broke something in our relationship. it scares me because our relationship is the crux of my life rn, we live together and they are my main support system and i truly do not think i have the means to rebuild myself if something were to go wrong at this current moment in time. i think emery may feel the same but thats also a sad reason to be in a relationship. not that it IS the reason for our relationship. i think we still have a lot to figure out when it comes to each other’s emotional responses and coping mechanisms. i think i need to be kinder to emery when they are expressing emotion. its just hard for me sometimes because when they get very emotional i can feel a wall coming down over my heart, can feel myself steeling myself in some sort of preparation. i think it must be something ive learned to defend myself in the past and its so instilled in me that it continues now even though the situation is very different. i want them to understand that but i dont want it to seem like im making excuses. in my last therapy session we talked about the difference between “big T” trauma and “little t” trauma, how its hard for me to pick apart which parts of me are maladapted because of the way i grew up, and which parts of me are just me actually. there’s no defining event, no single “break” that marks a before and after that i can define and work through. its just in everything i do. every day im trying to work through how i got to where i currently am. im sure emery does the same. i think our problem is not that we are too different in this, but that we are too similar. i know emery feels that i dont share enough w them either, and i think i should confront that. i just miss connecting with them on a deeper level. we have been very busy with moving in and the practical details and preparation that needed to occur. i dont want any more surface level conversations.
The family of Delrawn Small, a black man killed by an off-duty New York City police officer on July 4, 2016, held a candlelight vigil Monday night at the intersection where he died.
Small was fatally shot by NYPD Officer Wayne Isaacs, who is also black, in what police called a road-rage incident.
Dozens of family members and supporters walked from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to Atlantic Avenue and Bradford Street, where Isaacs shot Small with his NYPD service weapon one year ago. Read more (7/5/17)
With this spellbinding project, insanely talented artist @littlechmura wanted to create a self-contained moment for each of these beloved Harry Potter characters—a single scene that gives a glimpse into their own magical worlds. She’s calling the series “One Breath Each”, and we’re calling it GORGEOUS AF.
Whining about transwomen. Ugh. Will TERFs ever not whine?
I ask why, as a transwoman born with debilitating dysphoria,
you use the term “woman parts.” I don’t know what the fuck that means. I
honestly chuckled reading that shit. Sorry you benefit from going along with
the arbitrary lie you were fed since birth that your vagina defines your gender
identity. But I can assure you, upside-down girl, a large, veiny schlong can
still be “woman parts” if it indeed belongs to a woman. But lol whatever.
Honestly I’m not angry with you. Not because I have any
fucks to give about your plight as a pouty little brat, but because I don’t.
You’re not worth the spoons to get mad at. You are worth mockery though, which
I shall do swiftly and without regret.
You make quite a few assumptions regarding transwomanhood.
You do realize that most of us won’t get surgery, right? It’s expensive, not
covered by insurance, painful, risky, and can often lead to a lifetime of follow-up
surgeries. Why do you jump immediately to the conclusion that our genitals are
what define our womanhood? Probably because you’re still married to the
privilege that comes with being a ciswoman in love with her vagina.
I want to be clear that being in love with your vagina is
far from a problem in my book. It’s a beautiful thing to be proud of something
that has been used against you for centuries, something that has been shamed,
abused, mutilated, something that made you a target for violence. Ciswomen are
still regularly discriminated against both interpersonally and systematically,
and of course their arbitrarily gendered genitalia play a factor into this. I
have no issue with you caring about yourself and the rights of ciswomen. But I
have a few questions for your ass:
What makes you think that transwomen aren’t constantly
bombarded with dick pics and flashers? What makes you think that I, as a
transwoman, cannot be a rape survivor as well? Because let me tell you, I
fucking am. I am a repeated rape survivor. Why are you always pointing to one
of two transwomen in the public eye as an end all example of our “privilege,”
when she represents a very small sample size of privileged and problematic
transwomen? Why do you think that all of us give a shit if you have genital
preferences, that somehow we don’t already know that our reproductive systems
are different than yours and somehow transmens’ similar systems to yours are
null and void because these are “woman parts?” What makes you think that a
transwoman’s inability to have biological children is a lesser experience than
a ciswoman’s? Like, what the hell makes you legitimately posit this? What makes
you think that transwomens’ oppression is a newer thing than that of ciswomens’?
What makes you think that we don’t experience scrutiny and emotional abuse
based on our bodies to an equal or perhaps even greater extent than you? What
makes you think that the way we behave isn’t also conditioned early on to
ensure we never escalate situations with men, that we don’t carry weapons and
text friends, that we don’t fear both rape and murder, that men who rape or
murder us will somehow be rightfully convicted but yours won’t? What makes you
think that some of us never presented naturally femme even before transition,
and even with the privilege of being cispassing come unique challenges and
fears? Fears of being sexually assaulted then “found out” and thusly beaten and/or
murdered. Fears of simply minding your own business sans makeup, your ass
grabbed on the train, another man coming to your aid, then infuriated once he
figures out that you’re “not a real woman” because he sees five o’ clock shadow
(a personal experience of mine).
Why do you think transwomen minding their own business in
changing rooms is the same thing as being “forced to see a penis?” Why do you
think we were ever equal to a man even when we were being raised as “boys?” Why
is somehow your language more important than our lives and well-being? Why is “oppressive
language” the same to you coming from transwomen as it is from men? How is our
fight for our lives oppressive to your ass?
I’m sorry some transwomen sent you meanie pants messages. I
wouldn’t personally send something like that to you, as threats are not in my
vocabulary. But did you ever sit and think, hmm, maybe there is a legitimate
reason why they’re reacting this way? Ever stop and think “Hmm. Maybe I’m
crying cistears and doing everything in my power to silence and diminish the
experiences of transwomen, experiences I obviously don’t know jack shit about
based on the trash article I wrote for Medium?”
I agree, your birth control and abortion rights are
important. But I’ll admit that your toplessness is not a particularly urgent
issue to me, and this is coming from a transwoman who developed breasts at a young
age. On paper, yeah, your rights to openly displaying your breasts are valid,
but some of us have bigger worries than you trying to make everyone look at your boobies. That’s a nice problem to have, sweetie. Ask any woman of color, specifically
black women. They have bigger worries than you. They face bigger adversity and
marginalization than you. And these include ciswomen.
Why do you assume our bodies aren’t hypersexualized and
catcalled every fucking day, that we don’t have to conform even more intensely
to mens’ standards? That if we don’t
shave carefully and wear heaping loads of makeup our lives won’t be in more
danger than you could ever fathom? We’ve lost 13 transwomen so far this year to
anti-trans violence. These were all transwomen of color, most of whom were
black transwomen. You yourself acknowledge that we’re a small percent of the
population, and yet so many of us are dying.
Why do you gloss over the intensified violence we face? Once
again I ask, why do you insist that our surgeries are what define us? Why are
you so obsessed with our surgeries?
I can answer all of these questions for you: you don’t see
us as women, or even as people. You want us gone, you want us silenced, you
want us to appeal to your comfywumfyness. As self-aggrandizing as it is to
quote my own work, I wrote a song that deals with shits like you. The hook goes
as such:
“What you see is everlasting
I ain’t going nowhere,
I’m staying right here.
What you see is everlasting
I ain’t going nowhere,
I’m staying right here.
Your comfort doesn’t matter to me if my well-being doesn’t
matter to you. Why can’t you get that thru ur head, thru ur head?
Your comfort doesn’t matter to me if my well-being doesn’t
matter to you. Why can’t you get that thru ur head, thru ur head?”
We all know why you can’t. And if your feelings need to be accommodated in order for you to be an ally, you never were one from the start.
we need to talk about the people who are perpetrating deadly IPV towards black trans women, and not just stopping at the fact of their deaths. can’t move forward if only half of the problem is acknowledged.
IPV = Intimate Partner Violence
majority of trans women are getting killed by their s.o. than by say the police and this is an issue that needs to be talked about wrt to domestic violence
tfw u need 2 get that hair back but dont want 2 suffer thru the “growing out” phase b/c u already lookin a lot rougher than u did 1 year ago
memories of falling in love that i have while scrolling through my partner’s instagram (lol):
times when they’d come down to the city from where they lived and id pick them up at penn station and be so so nervous to see them and they always looked so good!
spending a lot of time in parks and nature. hiking. plants. so much green around us. a lushness that filled my heart. sweet fragrances in the air. feeling self-conscious about sweating…laughing about it later. mosquitoes…feeling like the trees could hold secrets. telling secrets that i didnt know were secrets but that i knew i wouldnt want to tell anyone but them. sounds of rushing water. silences filled with meaning.
time not existing. time as a construct entirely out of my realm of consciousness. time floating by like a soft river carrying me in its current until it got dark and we had to part. time crushing me like a textbook dropped on a paper crane. flattened.
taking the train to visit them where they lived and planning how to casually step off the platform when it was my stop and i knew they would be waiting for me. spending the whole train ride thinking about the time we’d spend together.
watching them drive their car. learning about different adventures they had in their car growing up in their neighborhood. trying to imagine the person they were before…feeling slightly jealous of all the people that knew them before you did. feeling sad that there is so much you have missed.
the night we made cookies.
every night we spent together.
crying on the train on the way home after the night we made cookies. crying when i got home. going for a walk to the beach to see the moon but the sky having too many clouds. crying again. realizing that the crying was falling in love and not realizing that falling in love was painful and then feeling silly not realizing that and then feeling scared.
and then feeling lucky. grateful to be known and to know. to be given the opportunity to break open and be filled; and to fill another.
I’m severely disabled with nerve damage from an accident, and this month escaped 2 yrs of near homelessness. Consequently I’m without basic appliances/furniture - incl. a fridge and a wardrobe - leaving me in limbo for over a week. There have also been difficulties with buying enough food & bedding.
This is costing extra carer fees for daily food shopping (approx $968/month for daily 1 hr shopping). This accumulation is more expensive than buying a fridge or buying food in bulk.
Due to obligations to pay large debts by end of the year… $973 in funds for food, fridge and wardrobe must be raised within the next day.
