Somehow This Is Not An Onion Article.

and this is where i'm reminded of an unrelated conversation i had a while back, in which i was expressing a desire for better data on things like the actual correlation of pelvic width to assigned gender (coming as i do from a narrow-hipped mother and wide-hipped father), and the friend i was talking to was like, why even cede that ground, though? like, even if wide hips are generally a Woman Thing, well, (a) there's nothing wrong with Woman Things and (b) i thought we'd established that gender isn't sited in the body? and at the time i was like, fair enough! and let it go, because i agree with both those points—but i was never entirely satisfied with how the conversation had gone, and my thought process today helped clarify for me why: because wanting better data about actual quantifiable things that we tend to just handwave with (cis)gendered assumptions isn't, actually, about wanting to validate my gender by establishing that i got my hips from my dad or whatever; it's about the fact that letting gendered stereotypes gaslight you about the actual reality of the world we inhabit makes you—me—a sloppy, stupid thinker!! and like. i aspire to be compassionate. i aspire to be consistent. but—by the god i don't believe in—i aspire, maybe above all else, to be precise.

so i’m friends on strava with Baby Sister’s extremely sweet, extremely earnest nerd-jock boyfriend, right, because i’m trying to Behave Welcomingly towards the partners of important women in my life despite being, if we’re being honest, the world’s most defensively shriveled social prune, and today that normally-very-incidental fact rubbed my nose hard in how much sexism i still gotta unlearn—

so i went for my stupid dinky little run, right, and dutifully logged it, and found myself looking at my dash or activity feed or whatever they call it over there, and realized Baby Sister’s bf had also just been for a run, which had taken him about the same amount of time; but the thing was, i’d actually run, like, 15% longer than he had, it was just that my pace per mile had also been, like, a minute and a half faster than his. which was really startling to me, because i absolutely reflexively assumed that a tall mid-twenties cis guy, who i know for a fact cycles and rock-climbs on the reg, was going to be a faster runner than me, a medium-height estrogenized couch potato!

and like, obviously i have no idea what relationship this kid's pace today had to his actual capacity, and also quite frankly in my experience running is a sport where, sure, your fitness matters or whatever, but it’s also just radically easier the less you weigh?? so i’m not particularly priding myself on a (decidedly non-elite) pace that has a lot less to do with my current fitness level (rusty) and a lot more to do with currently being underweight bc i’m bad at feeding myself bc adhd. but it just feels like. pretty fuckin telling that i was so taken aback!!

gotta say tumblr's little pro-cursive revival has really reactivated early middle school memories of being forced to write up assignments in crabbed horrible cursive and hating it more with every letter whose setup i failed to properly anticipate far enough in advance to connect it smoothly (possibly bc adhd but like. hashtag guy who's only ever had adhd so what do i know.)

at first when i was remaking i thought 'now i can voice all the controversial opinions i felt obliged to keep mum about before!' (to be clear, my controversial opinions are things like 'it's possible to oppose monarchy in real life AND still enjoy a fictional king from time to time.' 'i don't entirely reject the idea of so-called cultural christianity, but i feel strongly that the label should be reserved for patterns of behavior, rhetoric, etc, and not applied to individual people.' idk i don't keep a running list but you get the idea probably.)

but un/fortunately i've been so selective in my refollowing (which to be clear is still very much a work in progress) that i'm not actually encountering any of the discourse to which i'd previously built up all these objections! which is very restful, but doesn't exactly stimulate me to articulate my positions…

Eurasian Red Squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (April 25, 2021).

unfortunately every time i contemplate perpetrating a text post i get a sentence or three into it only to experience agonies over the hideousness of my own prose styling

which is putting something of a crimp in this whole 'what if i started blogging again' experiment

Spangle-cheeked Tanager

javier.chaves.photography

アオバト

Terrace paddies in North Vietnam [Shortlisted in National Geographic Photo Contest 2015] by Quynh Anh Photography on Flickr

オオルリ

Kimono 098.

Pale Methy Blue ~ Dull Citrine ~ Pinkish Cinnamon ~ Orange Yellow

Colour study using Sanzo Wada’s Dictionary of Colour combinations. (Vol. 2)