Someone bought me something, and it arrived today.
I almost took a smiling selfie with it and sent it to that person. A perfect execution of the Gratitude action, as taught by my parents. “If you want more presents, you have to send a thank you note.”
What if I don’t want more presents? What if I want my children to learn about delighting in the gifting, not in the theater of receiving? What if I don’t want to relate to the people who are important to me in transactional relationship of gift giving and hollow gratitude, or worse, unbounded and metastasizing emotional debt?
uspol, queer (-), scotus
https://mastodon.online/@danirabbit/115012926460464839
This.
Confession time: do you mix up your toothbrush and razor? I do.
I dress hot for me. I don’t do it as an open invitation to my body. I do It do affirm that I like me.
PSA: single-evening dance-and-makeout sessions with people you just met and never intended to see again (and are very explicit and clear about that with them) are fun.
This is what I get for trying a new brand of chai. They put stevia in. Uuuuuugh.
I’m an #asexual #trans #lesbian, which is a particularly cursed combo for reasons I won’t explore here. But suffice it to say I therefor have reason to explore the nuances of what kinds of touch I enjoy, and in doing so I’ve observed that, for me, I experience episodic desire for #SensualTouch that is disconnected from my episodic experience of being horny. I’ve taken to describing this as feeling #SkinThirst.
Some disambiguation: I distinguish being skin thirsty from being chronically touch starved in the same way that wanting to get some sunshine in my hair is different from a chronic vitamin D deficiency - one is an experience I have episodically that might last hours to days, and the other is a long-term lack of something important. Both can be true at the same time, but I mean different things by them.
By way of illuminating the difference from being horny, I’ve observed that when I’m horny, masturbating and having an orgasm can satiate that need. By contrast, feeling skin thirsty cannot be slaked without someone else touching me. It may fade in time on its own, but masturbating does absolutely nothing for it, because my needs for sensual touch are not addressed by sexual activity, except coincidentally. Additionally, I get horny and skin thirsty on TOTALLY different frequencies. I’m horny maybe once a month. I get skin thirsty at least weekly, and often more frequently than that.
And when I say I get skin thirsty, it means I CRAVE focused, intentional touch. Preferably in large quantity. I’ve described this as “making out in such a way as to get a hard R rating.” However, for me, a romantic component isn’t actually required, it is possible to get what I need platonically.
Here are some of my previous threads about this - there’s some fabulous discussion in there, and I was surprised to find how many people experience skin thirst as disconnected entirely from their experience of feeling horny OR that there was a connection, but not one that was entirely one-to-one.
This thread is where I spoke about my explorations of the term “skin thirsty” plus some feedback about it: https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113530303076465658
Here are many additional folks responding to me asking for input: https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113602672233337549
And this is a poll about it with more comments: https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113626166762795325
I continue to post about it with the hashtags #SensualTouch and #SkinThirst.
My first experience in the world was to be non-consensually gendered
#ThingsYouCantUnsay
My first experience in the world was to be non-consensually gendered. Before my umbilical cord was cut, medical professionals had decided how they would gender me. Everyone else followed. I was not given a chance to consent to that gendering and the role that came with it. I was not given a chance to say no.
That act of violence came with further coercion. I was conscripted to follow the rules of the gender that was forced on me, and those rules included gaslighting myself about who I was; any deviation from the role I was assigned was to be shamed at a minimum.
#Trans #Asexual
1/4
Dear cis women who genuinely want more trans women in your club/company/organization,
Why? Why do you want trans women to feel comfortable in that organization? Let that sit a moment, we’ll come back to it.
Trans women (and do you mean women? What about trans people who identify as… not women, but not men? What about trans women with beards? I’ve barely scratched the surface with these examples) learn fast that talk is cheap, only actions matter. If you want trans folks to feel comfortable with you, do things to help marginalized folks.
Teach technical skills to non-stereotypically technical people.
Publicly pressure local officials to make statements supporting the local abortion clinic.
Shun TERFs. For goodness sake, don’t promote Harry Potter books. Why not your beloved HP? JK Rowling is a famous and well-funded TERF.
Believe people when they choose to speak.
1/5
I’m planning on dying beautiful on the inside. If it’s today, or tomorrow, or next year, or in another half century, people who matter to me know I’m a woman and my name is Willow. If it’s unjust, and I’m trans, so it will be, remember me on our Day of Remembrance.
In the mean time, I plan to live my life so the patriarchy quivers at my high-heeled step, my children know they can be whoever they are and they’ll know their paths by listening to themselves, and the eggs come to rest near my warmth.
Trans lives are resistance. Live yours.
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Willow, Venus Pirate 🏳️⚧️