oddtail

18+ oddtail, 4 months ago to random

I'm not the first person to suggest it, although I've always seen it framed as more of a joke.

We should have safewords for non sexual interactions. Not just with sexual or romantic partners, either. Any friend we trust.

Sometimes we realise either we or the other person is having emotions they can't handle. Sometimes there's too much emotion or tension or conflict to explain before it's too late. Sometimes people don't notice and don't think. As an autistic person, my talking has... inertia. Like a freight train. I find it hard to suddenly stop a train of thought (pun fully intended) and almost impossible to stop mid sentence.

Imagine there was a safeword I, or the other person, could use to signal to the other person "stop. You need to. You can try to pry as to why later".

ttRPGs already use basically safeword for conversations, it's called the "X card". Look it up, but tldr: if you can't handle a game or narration element, you use the card and things stop, reset and proceed without that element.

You are allowed to elaborate what you have a problem with and why, but the social contract is explicitly that others are not allowed to pry or question your use of the X card. It's to ensure no judgment of using it, and giving one confidence there will be no judgment BEFORE one uses it. So that anyone can use it freely.

Imagine that for talking to close friends.

18+ oddtail, 5 months ago to random

I don't see this talked about like, ever.

So I'll talk about it.

If you realised you're trans but find yourself sometimes not really hating your assigned gender and being like "meh" to it?

1. That doesn't mean you've been cis all along;
2. It doesn't mean you just imagined your dysphoria;
3. You're not "pretending" anything or lying to anyone, least of all yourself.

It just means you're more tired than dysphoric. Your brain can't keep negative feelings at full steam all the time, which is good. It's not supposed to.

Do not measure your transness by how much you CURRENTLY need to transition. Dysphoria comes and goes. So does euphoria, for that matter.

I went through several cycles of "I am trans. Wait... I don't feel strongly about this anymore. Was that real? No, wait, ARGH, I'm trans. Wait..." and so on, before I started transitioning. Fooled me every single time.

I still experience this. I'm experiencing this today. I am currently wondering why this whole transition thing is such a big deal to me.

But guess what. I know I'm trans, I've been through this before. Doubts that something is true are not the same as knowing it is not.

You will have doubts whether you're trans years after you transition to your general satisfaction. You will. It just happens. You will still be almost certainly happy that you transitioned. That's what being trans means.

If you don't MIND your assigned gender at the moment, but still your actual gender sounds neat, you're still trans.

You're allowed to pause things and recalibrate, or focus on something else. Your transition should go at your pace.

But you haven't suddenly become cis. I promise you that you haven't. You still prefer to function as your real gender, don't you?

I've done this enough times that I need to say it. It's OK. It ebbs and flows. As long as you're not actually satisfied with your assigned gender, as long as you have ANY overall need to transition, you're not cis. You may be genderfluid or genderflux or bigender or agender or genderqueer or non-binary. Knock yourself out exploring those (I sure did). There's no penalty for concluding with "nah".

You may also be very Very, Very Tired.

But none of those things mean "cis". I'm begging you, believe me.

EDIT: one good way to figure this out is - OK, so you don't jump for joy at the thought of transitioning. Now imagine yourself in your actual gender. Imagine it's all done and dealt with. Is your imagined self repulsive, do you want to avoid this? Does the idea of HAVING transitioned fill you with discomfort?

If not, then you're not cis. Cis people are uncomfortable with the idea of transitioning because they inhabit their AGAB. That's their entire deal.

EDIT 2: also, this is the MOST unintuitive thing ever - I firmly believe feeling "meh" about transition can paradoxically be a symptom of dysphoria.

I don't think it's an accident that I currently feel this way after some rough days, and while having to deal with several days' worth of facial hair. One way dysphoria manifests is that your emotions shut down for maintenance. It's good. But it doesn't mean they were never there in the first place.