Go Away Forever With Me

I made this!!

genuinely wild how often i realize i’ve taken an interpersonal situation where the information i actually have is ‘i’m not having a good time’ and turned it into ‘i’m worried they’re not having a good time with me’

probably ultimately very straightforwardly traceable back to a childhood in which i wasn’t having a good time with my mother and the only variable in the situation that i actually had the power to alter was myself, so that now when as an adult i’m having a bad time with someone my instinct is still to fix myself instead of, you know, removing myself? or alternatively checking in with them about how things are feeling to them and attempting to arrive at a meeting of the minds, or at least a mutually semi-satisfactory compromise?

anyway like. this failure mode probably implies a particular menu of followup actions that i ought to be identifying and instituting, but i’d frankly settle for just ‘recognizing this particular self-abnegating reframing when i’m in the process of committing it’!

Braun T52 // transistor radio (Germany, 1961)

the problem with being fair-minded is that when something is hurting your feelings but it's something you've previously done yourself you kind of just have to be like. welp.

people refuse to understand the concept of "this isn't important to me but i understand why it might be important to other people"

And here it is: the bluethroat in all its glory.

also i've been mainlining patricia moyes' henry tibbett mysteries which are like. generally solid-enough if not brilliant entries in the Classic British Mystery Canon if you like that sort of thing, with of course the usual disclaimers about homophobia, sexism, &c: notably there's also one book with a minor trans character! and a Helpful Explanation about how her husband doesn't feel at all strange about her being trans because she's so obviously ~naturally feminine~ and being trans is Totally Separate from being gay—not, to be clear, in the way we'd actually agree with, that like, one is sexuality and the other gender; but rather in a way where 'it always leads to misery if a transsexual experiments with homosexuality.' [me at this juncture staring into the camera & thinking abt all the gleeful gay trans people on tumblr.] anyway to me this was ultimately less offensive than it was laughable, though of course ymmv! however there was also one with a butch character, and that one made me rather sadder and also got me thinking again about how stupid trans infighting is, because you can't actually separate homophobia from transphobia from misogyny—

[H]e saw a massive and somewhat formidable figure making its way across the lawn from the direction of the greenhouse. It was impossible at this distance to tell if the newcomer was male or female—the cropped grey hair, the weather-beaten features, the corduroy knee-breeches and open-necked shirt were appropriate to either sex. Even the voice was ambiguous. […] At close quarters, Henry was surprised to see that the mannish face was coated with a thick layer of pancake make-up, in a grotesque parody of femininity.

and

Facing her, with their backs to the door, were two masculine back-views, both wearing dinner jackets. As they turned to greet the newcomers, Henry was not at all surprised to see that one of them was Dolly, nattily dressed in evening wear, complete with taped-seam trousers, a frilled white shirt and a black bow tie. […] Dolly stood in the doorway, lumpish and unhappy in her ridiculous dinner jacket…

like. the feminine-coded aspects of her presentation are 'grotesque.' the masculine aspects are 'ridiculous.' she can't win! and like. the character is a butch who was almost certainly assigned female at birth, but the narrative critiques her in these ways that are unavoidably deeply transmisogynistic—i mean, that line about her made-up 'mannish face' being 'a grotesque parody of femininity'?? yikes.

anyway. just wild in light of this to be aware of how many trans bloggers on here are fighting one another abt which of us are Really Oppressed. like. is dolly ~transmisogyny-exempt~? what about the trans woman from the other book, who's treated entirely respectfully by the narrative and by the characters—but also can't access her inheritance, because claiming it would require her to out herself…? i just don't understand any analysis that comes to any conclusion besides 'these are all different heads of the same vicious hydra, and many of us may face the same attack at different times; the answer is mutual solidarity and united resistance.'

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

オオルリ

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!!