Newtowner @danielle@octodon.social

I am also convinced that "GCU Release the Chocolate
Accompaniments" is a minor character in a Culture fanfic novella somewhere

https://tmblr.co/ZP7VLs2LLcgkH

All I am saying is that I desperately want to read

"The Story of the Star Trek: The Secret of the Story of the Star Wars"

https://tmblr.co/ZP7VLs2L1dL9H

I think what upsets me about how transphobia gets called out is when allies insist that "trans women are real women" and shut down any and all sentiments to the contrary. It plays into my "not trans enough" fears. I don't *feel* like a "real woman" (whatever that is) and I'm not in a position to medically transition, so hey maybe I'm not really trans? Maybe I really am that gross manbaby I hear so much about on the internet? And the self-doubt, it grows...

So how does Romeo + Juliet come across to anyone who wasn't born in the 70s? Because I can't listen to Radiohead's "talk show host" without this weird mix of feels about the cruelty of my life and the bitterness of like, stuff, and the recognition of how utterly ordinary those feels are: that Shakespeare dude had me pegged rather a long time ago and the only reason I missed that in English class is that King Lear didn't have a cool soundtrack.

Is there a name for the phenomenon where you only need to do 5 minutes of work to finish off a 3 year old project and finally get the paper accepted but it's just too hard to care any more?

Idle thought: As my presentation becomes more feminine, people don't usually change pronoun (understandably), but other things do shift: tone of voice, phrasing, familiarity, all imply an "assumed femininity". It's occasionally frustrating, but mostly reassuring? Even the bad stuff shows a recognition that something is feminine about me, and a willingness to adapt to it, I suppose. It's not everything I've ever wanted, but anything is better than dysphoria so I'll take what I can get!

As a trans femme who left mefi because the aggressiveness of my ostensible "allies" kept sending me into anxious dysphoric meltdowns, I'm finding this deeply amusing:

http://www.metafilter.com/166854/Social-justice-callout-culture-and-their-relationship-to-social-media

At this point I'd be more willing to talk gender on bloody *kiwifarms* than on metafilter, and not the second-wave feminists (are there any left on mefi?) causing the problem.

I wish I had popcorn.

Okay. My professional webpage now refers to my gender identity, albeit indirectly and in the most timid way possible. Trying to convince myself not to take it down before anyone sees. Seriously why am I so scared? I have tenure. I've presented femme at the last two conferences. Half my subfield already uses the feminine form of my name. No-one is even slightly bothered. Yet I am still terrified. Sigh. Too many bad memories to believe the world has really changed I suppose.

The Sydney climate is making me pathetic. 10°C is not that cold. So why am I wearing four layers with the heating on and still complaining bitterly about the chill?

In the distant pages of the Celestial Emporium of Child Knowledge it is written that the animals my daughter can transform into can be classified as (a) goats, (b) dragons, (c) people (d) all the ones that are babies, (e) the girl ones, (f) frogs, and (g) a potato.

I have an abusive polyamorous relationship going on with R, git and LaTeX. I hate them all and they make me cry on a regular basis, but I can't live without any of them.

Apparently I gave a "thumbs up" to some Iron Maiden songs a while back and Google is now telling me all about it. Which actually feels like a pretty good use of machine learning? If a support vector machine can remind me that I really liked Aces High, that's probably keeping me out of mischief in some other way?

Tiny trans joy: growing up south of the Barassi line they taught me the boy rules so fucking well that whenever a rugby-state dude tries to explain AFL to me I get to ask his opinion as to what the Rules of the Game folks should count as prior opportunity when the ball carrier is tackled. I mean, it's not like I know what the right interpretation for holding the ball should be ... But I do love watching the boys squirm when they realise that the girlyboy knows the game better than they do

I am genuinely loving the 500 character constraint in a public microblogging context. It's just long enough to say a thing worth saying (with appropriate hedges) and just public enough to stop me from being a jerk, but not so long that I'm inclined to digress too far when making a point, nor visible enough that I'm afraid to talk about myself.

I genuinely don't care if anyone reads or follows or cares - I just really like trying to write about my life given that these are the rules.

Academic dilemma #2345: if someone who hasn't read much history cites your 10 year old paper and gives you credit for a 50 year old finding, how embarrassed should you be when reviewing their paper and correcting their misconception?

Transgender dilemma #7883: an inevitable consequence of visual statistical learning and expertise is that men are better judges of masculinity and women are better judges of femininity. The corollary is that there is an inevitable point in transition where men judge you to be a woman and women judge you to be a man, especially around the bathroom, where category boundaries matter. If your goal is to minimise everyone's discomfort, which bathroom do you use? Any suggestions, Miss Manners?

Sometimes I wish I knew other boring middle aged middle class trans women who just want a quiet life. I'm not sure I'm cut out for the political shitfight I seem to be caught up in. Sigh.

In retrospect though, I was always caught up in this. Regardless of what labels we use, the moment amab folks start performing femininity we become a target for transmisogyny by both cis men and cis women. It's just taken me a long time to realise what everyone around me has been doing all along. Oh well.

This is the tale of the times. Forget the power of an evening with friends, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of sleep or serenity, for in the grim dark present there is only lice. There is no peace amongst the unwashed dishes, only an eternity of foodscraps and laundry, and the indifferent laughter of thirsty toddlers. #parenthammer40k