Trying To Figure Out My Gender Is Confusing. Womanhood Is Like Wearing Socks (I Hate Wearing Socks But

Not aroace not alloace but a secret third thing (being ace impacts how I experience romantic attraction in a way I cannot define)

A drawing I made a month ago that I'm still struggling with, and maybe a lot of people would relate to as well.

For me it's about my gender in conflict with my body, about the struggles of being someone with a menstrual cycle, the expectations people have of me because I'm perceived as a woman, mental health, and my asexuality. And it's about anything you see in it too.

Please don't repost my art to other platforms!

"Such articles [about how sex is better than a movie, a book, a game etc] imply not only that sex is normal and wonderful but also that sex is the main source of adventure, reflecting what journalist Rachel Hills calls "the sex myth" in her book of the same name. The sex myth, which is an extension of compulsory sexuality, has two parts. One is obvious: sex is everywhere and we are saturated in it, from song lyrics to television shows to close-ups of women's lipsticked mouths eating burgers, meat juice trickling down their throats. The second part is the belief that "sex is more special, more significant, a source of greater thrills and more perfect pleasure than any other activity humans engage in." No sex means no pleasure, or no ability to enjoy pleasure.

"The result is that anyone who isn't sexual enough or sexual in the right way becomes lesser. The label of asexual should be value neutral. It should indicate little more that sexual orientation. Instead, asexual implies a slew of other, negative associations: passionless, uptight, boring, robotic, cold, prude, frigid, lacking, broken. These, especially broken, are the words aces use again and again to describe how we are perceived and made to feel."

~ Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."

We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.

✴️Fish dreams✴️

listening to car seat headrest moodboard

Introducing my babies (aka the only OCs I ever draw) Val and Xander

Image ID at end of post

So some backstory on these guys, they're werebeasts! They don't transform into any specific creature, just go from human looking to humanoid. Xander is only half werebeast so they cannot transform as drastically. They've been friends since childhood and Xander loves Val so much, although she's demi romantic and won't reciprocate his feelings until many years into their adulthood. Val loves getting into fights and Xander constantly has to protect her.

In the main story I'm working with right now Val is 19 and Xander is 20. Val's full name is Valerie but she hates it. She's demiro and pansexual! Her official gender label would probably be demi-girl but she doesn't label it. She uses she/her. Xander rejects all labels for his sexuality and gender, they just regularly refer to themselves as "one queer motherfucker" they technically go by all pronouns but tend to prefer he/they

I made their refs like a year ago and forgot to draw them for a while ngl. But I wanna explore their relationship more and the world they're in so I'll probably be posting about them once in a while

Please don't repost my art to other platforms!

[image ID: image is a drawing of two humanoid characters yelling at each other. One is female with red curly hair and big animal-like ears. She is covered in bruises and cuts. Her text reads "Xander what the fuck! I told you not to get involved. You just have to be the hero." The other person is androgynous with black hair in short dreads. They have pointy ears and claws. His text reads "I thought they were going to kill you! Val, you can't keep picking fights you can't win." End of image ID]

I want to phase AGAB language out of my normal use because I'm not intersex and AGAB was meant for intersex people. Does anyone have any good alternatives? I use "person with a uterus" or "person with a penis" or any other anatomy based language when it's relevant to the conversation but there are aspects of my body and experience I want to talk about that aren't just about my organs.

I'm a person who is perceived as a woman. I check off all the boxes for what is considered "standard female anatomy" (big quotes here, I don't think a standard should define us) I grew up raised as a girl, I haven't physically transitioned at all, etc etc etc

I want to be able to acknowledge and expand on these parts of my existence without referring to myself as a woman bc I'm not. I also don't want to be put in the "woman-lite" category. I don't see my body as being gendered even if other people perceive it as being woman gendered. I've considered the term "female-bodied' to describe me but my worry is that language could be used against trans people. I don't like the terms masc or fem for me either because I don't feel masculine or feminine. I don't connect to those terms.

I constantly feel like when I try to explain my experience I run into all sorts of linguistics barriers and it's deeply frustrating to me

I'm starting to get so tired of seeing posts that are like "Well actually, that latest Trump executive order is not a real law, infact it's downright illegal so don't despair". Like brother, he launched an actual literal insurrection and got away with it, who cares if something else he does I also illegal? Who cares if his EOs are not laws when they are being enforced as if they are?! Sure his "ban all DEI" orders are illegal, that didn't stop all the corporations from complying with his orders. Who cares that DOGE is not a federal agency and doesn't have any legal power, they are acting like they have absolute power and no one is stopping them. I need liberals to finally wake up and realize that laws only exist if someone is enforcing them. You government, the entity that's meant to enforce those laws, is full of bloodthirsty fascists who are perfectly happy with everything that's going on. You are not "becoming a dictatorship", you've been living in one for the last decade. They just finally finished consolidating their power and stopped pretending.

The thing about the setting of Sky COTL is that even though the player characters can all fly the world is built by an ancient civilization of people who could not and pretty much all the NPCs you will interact with outside of the dev inserts during anniversaries etc. are spirits of those people who could not fly. as a sky kid you are functionally just a mimic that takes on the appearance of the ancestors and picks up their gestures and fashions through imitation of their cultures you are exposed to. you don’t sneeze innately - you learn how to do a sneeze gesture by watching a spirit sneeze. this is how you learn how to wave to people, how to dance, how to applaud. when sky kids (players) communicate with each other, this is the language they have learned to do so, but because of how players communicate with each other, they are abstracting the language from the ancients into a sky kid culture of their own. player communities use the Bow emote frequently with each other in gratitude at every little interaction, which makes sky kids out to be funny little courteous guys. i got so offroaded from what i was going to say originally, which is that the pleasure of a world where you can fly is not necessarily one absent stairs, but one where stairs exist but where you can circumvent them with flight