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blog/2019/05/gender-critical.html

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 				<h1>So I guess I'm gender-critical now</h1>
 				<p>published: 2019-05-23</p>
-				<p>updated: 2022-11-20</p>
+				<p>updated: 2024-09-05</p>
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 				<p>I am biologically female.</p>
-				<p>That's not hate speech. I was born female. I have female genitals. Had I been born a male, my parents would have had me circumcised, but instead I was a girl, so I was spared. I was raised female, with all the emotional trappings and socialization and enforced femininity that comes as such. I grew up with the societal expectation that I would get married to a man and have children and live a standard suburban life, an expectation that the vast majority of people in my life still operate under despite being quite vocal in recent years that I have no intention of reproducing.</p>
+				<p>That's not hate speech. I was born female. I have female genitals. Had I been born a male, my parents would have had me circumcised, but instead I was a girl, so I was spared. I was raised female, with all the emotional trappings and socialization and enforced femininity that comes as such. I grew up with the societal expectation that I would get married to a man and have children and live a standard suburban life, an expectation that the vast majority of people in my life still operate under despite me being quite vocal in recent years that I have no intention of reproducing.</p>
 				<p>At the end of 2014, after my first girlfriend cheated on me, I came out as bisexual to my parents and slowly my friends (at the time). Starting the summer of 2016, as the sudden fluxes of puberty settled into something resembling the rhythm of womanhood and my dysphoria flared up in response, I toyed with the idea of being nonbinary.</p>
 				<p>Labels are not intended to be permanent once first applied. Not to political positions, or religious affiliation, or things like gender or sexuality. Labels are for accurately describing experiences. One's loyalty should be to reflecting the truth of themselves, not clinging to labels as if they were the last lifeboats leaving the Titanic. If that means changing the labels one uses as shorthand for all the intricacies of themselves, then so be it.</p>
-				<p>As my time at college draws to a close, I've been doing a lot of self-reflection. Who I am, where I want to go on life. And as it turns out, I'm... not attracted to men. All the men I've ever been "attracted" to have been fictional, far out of my social standing, or held power over me in some capacity. Either they had no capacity to actually hurt me, or they did, and my subconscious mind thought that, if I got close to them, I would somehow be "spared" from whatever danger it was picking up on. Not <em>actual</em> attraction, but a defense mechanism. Hardly something that could <em>ever</em> blossom into a healthy relationship.</p>
+				<p>As my time at college draws to a close, I've been doing a lot of self-reflection. Who I am, where I want to go on life. And as it turns out, I'm... not attracted to men. Either I was subconsciously imagining them as "transmasculine female", deluding myself and lying to others for the sake of fitting in socially, or merely trying to protect myself from some danger my subconscious had picked up on - not <em>actual</em> attraction, but a defense mechanism. Hardly something that could <em>ever</em> blossom into a healthy relationship.</p>
 				<p>Even to one not knee-deep in the clusterfuck that is the postmodern gender theory sphere, it's obvious that a woman exclusively attracted to other women is called a... lesbian.</p>
-				<p>An admission to which one might respond, "but what about fem-aligned nonbinary people? You can't tell what gender someone is by looking at them! And what about women who look like men?" To which I would respond, I am not attracted to male genitals. I am not attracted to the male physiology. A masculine female's presentation will always have that undertone of femaleness underneath it, which makes it special, <em>what I'm attracted to</em>, different from a masculine male or any other kind of male. We can discourse all day about the defintion of the word "woman", but no amount of redefining "woman" as a misogynistic stereotype will make me attracted to a male.</p>
-				<p>And, as it turns out, I'm not nonbinary either. Because the idea of "nonbinary" genders has historically been used to slot gender-non-conforming people into a "failed at assigned gender role" category, and given that there is no definite meaning of what a nonbinary person transitioning would entail, it's kind of a... useless designation. Not to mention that it implies that one could simply "identify" in or out of sex-based oppression: I can barely get the people in my college to address me with they/them pronouns, and they're supposed to be super liberal and accepting about that kind of stuff! Do you <em>really</em> think that some random attacker on the street prowling for his next rape victim is going to care about what a pronoun pin says? I look like a female. I sound like a female. Everything about me screams "female", and no amount of "identifying" as something other than female is going to change biological reality.</p>
+				<p>An admission to which one might respond, "but what about fem-aligned nonbinary people? You can't tell what gender someone is by looking at them! And what about women who look like men?" To which I would respond, I am not attracted to male genitals. I am not attracted to the male physiology. A masculine female's presentation will always have that undertone of femaleness underneath it, which makes it special, <em>what I'm attracted to</em>, different from a masculine male or any other kind of male. We can discourse all day about the defintion of the word "woman", but no amount of redefining "woman" as a misogynistic stereotype will make me legitimately attracted to a male.</p>
+				<p>And, as it turns out, I'm not nonbinary either. Because the idea of "nonbinary" genders has historically been used to slot gender-non-conforming people into a "failed at assigned gender role" category, and given that there is no definite meaning of what a nonbinary person transitioning would entail, it's kind of a... useless designation. Not to mention that it implies that one could simply "identify" in or out of sex-based oppression: I could barely get the people in my college to address me with they/them pronouns, and they were supposed to be super liberal and accepting about that kind of stuff! Do you <em>really</em> think that some random attacker on the street prowling for his next rape victim is going to care about what a pronoun pin says? I look like a female. I sound like a female. Everything about me screams "female", and no amount of "identifying" as something other than female is going to change biological reality.</p>
 				<p>Societal reasons aren't enough to get me to stop being something. If that were true, you'd still be reading this on a WordPress blog, and I'd have announced that this post went up via Twitter. (Or Mastodon, now that I'm rewriting this post in 2022 and Twitter is up in flames.) As for personal reasons... I am still dysphoric. I still have dreams where I've managed to get a double mastectomy and a perfectly androgynous body and nobody saddles me with the gender role of "woman". But now I realize that most of it was because of these societal expectations that I so heavily resent being bound with. The technology side of the sphere on the internet that I inhabit (or used to inhabit, anyway) is heavily male-dominated. Back during the summer of 2018, when I was struggling through anhedonia, I spent a lot of time on chans, where the prevailing culture towards women is generally "tits or GTFO". And society in general, where I'm "too weak" or "too emotional" or "too-lighthearted". Being a man on the internet afforded me status, greater mobility, a greater likelihood of being <em>taken seriously</em>.</p>
 				<p>If my dysphoria is the result of societal messaging saying that I'm inferior for being a female, then why the hell do <em>I</em> have to change? Why <em>should</em> I? Why should I take hormones and get surgery and make myself into a lifelong medical patient in search for a salvation that will never come? I stand alone in the wilderness, and my desired androgyny feels sterile, lifeless, out of place. I stand alone in the wilderness, and nothing hurts.</p>
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blog/2019/09/sign-of-life.html

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-				<p>I feel as though I am waking up after a long sleep. Cradled by the undercurrents- not a sudden and fierce unleashing of power, like Ceuta bursting out from her tomb, but something more subdued, more silent. A trawl through the tombs instead, torch in amnesic hand, shards of memories slowly bubbling back to the surface as my eyes gaze on the carvings on the ancient hallways I pass by. Times past, long since passed, times where <a href="../../../flashfiction/e/erin.html">I sang in the sun and rolled in the grass. Times where the words flowed from my fingers as gracefully as a spider building its web.</a> But now everything is covered in webs, gray as silk, sparkling in the sparse flickering light.</p>
+				<p>I feel as though I am waking up after a long sleep. Cradled by the undercurrents - not a sudden and fierce unleashing of power, like Ceuta bursting out from her tomb, but something more subdued, more silent. A trawl through the tombs instead, torch in amnesic hand, shards of memories slowly bubbling back to the surface as my eyes gaze on the carvings on the ancient hallways I pass by. Times past, long since passed, times where <a href="../../../flashfiction/e/erin.html">I sang in the sun and rolled in the grass. Times where the words flowed from my fingers as gracefully as a spider building its web.</a> But now everything is covered in webs, gray as silk, sparkling in the sparse flickering light.</p>
 				<p><em>Returning home, are you? I never thought I’d see the day...</em></p>
 				<p><em>Welcome home, Vane Vander.</em></p>
 				<p>I feel as though, in the vast wilderness of my being, some part of me has died in order to survive. The forest has been razed, burnt to the ground. And although I know it will grow back, and it will bloom in abundance as it once did in full defiance of all I have gone through, it will never grow back the same.</p>

blog/2019/10/cameras.html

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 				<p>And for our second example, you give up the safety of not having to personally worry about financing your server and personally securing it for the freedom of not having to answer to anybody: not a corporate overlord like Google or Facebook, not a slackoff server admin who refuses to kick out repeat abusers of other users, not an easily-offended community when they come for you with their pitchforks and torches. There are other ways to be hurt when the day comes: the classic DDoS attack, mass reporting to a VPS provider, slander on social media where the search engines are likely to pick up on it. Even on <a href="../june/second-class-citizens.html">ZeroNet</a>, one isn't completely “safe”, as there's still the infinitely small chance of the Bitcoin private key of your zite being stolen, or a massive and widely-used blocklist adding your zite or user ID for the crime of having a wrong opinion.</p>
 				<p>But the cameras remain, and will remain so long as corporatism reigns and the NSA has its sticky fingers in everything. Autumn comes, but the chilling effect remains no matter the season.</p>
 				<p>For our third example, we'll turn the cameras around, and focus on... me. Or, rather, the places I live.</p>
-				<p>My friend's house is <i>covered</i> in Amazon Alexas and Google Homes. Every device has voice controls turned on. Always listening, always reporting everything to their respective corporations. And my mother- my <i>mother</i>, of all people- has made fun of them for this, for consenting to the auditory cameras, but they just shrug it off every time.</p>
+				<p>My friend's house is <i>covered</i> in Amazon Alexas and Google Homes. Every device has voice controls turned on. Always listening, always reporting everything to their respective corporations. And my mother - my <i>mother</i>, of all people - has made fun of them for this, for consenting to the auditory cameras, but they just shrug it off every time.</p>
 				<p>And the air grows frigid around us. Where once sparks flew and we spent hours thinking they were only mere minutes between us, the sparks go out, and I count the minutes until we go home, feigning a smile and going through the same routines in Minecraft for the millionth time.</p>
-				<p>At home- or the place I spend most of my time in, anyway- the surveillance is less thick. No Alexas disgrace the air, but everyone except for me is apparently too lazy to use their device keyboards, opting for voice dictation instead. Asking Siri the most ridiculous questions for the sole purpose of making me miffed, laughing to themselves when I refuse to consent to Apple analyzing whatever noises I make and leave the room.</p>
+				<p>At home - or the place I spend most of my time in, anyway - the surveillance is less thick. No Alexas disgrace the air, but everyone except for me is apparently too lazy to use their device keyboards, opting for voice dictation instead. Asking Siri the most ridiculous questions for the sole purpose of making me miffed, laughing to themselves when I refuse to consent to Apple analyzing whatever noises I make and leave the room.</p>
 				<p>But something more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. I... I can't seem to concentrate in the confines of my home anymore. The first third of this post was drafted at the park, and these last two seem to be some mere moment of respite, some sweet relief. I don't know if it's a psychic attack, willing or not, or my subconscious forcing me out of a place I swore I'd be out of forever just a year ago, or something else...</p>
 				<p>But I keep all my devices encrypted, full disk whenever possible, and I wipe and reinstall everything regularly, for I'll be damned if the cameras become real. Even if this is the only way to resist the golden cage, in such a seemingly insignificant area, I keep it close to my heart.</p>
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blog/2019/november/other-world.html

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 				<p>Late this morning, I ran away from home with little more than my purse and what I could shove into my backpack. I left behind my stash of music (which I kept forgetting to copy to my new laptop from my broken one) and the bulk of my video game collection and nearly all my clothes, all the things I have spent nineteen years collecting and hoarding that weren't washed away in the flood. All of my money, save the little cash that remains in my purse, is in the hands of my parents.</p>
 				<p>None of it feels real. My brain feels like, at any moment, I'll be back at home, sitting on my bed, confined in my room like I've been for the past five months. Slowly going crazy, losing touch with the outside world, with the <em>real</em> world. Constantly being entreated to give myself to the Spectacle, to reduce the depth of my mind to merely wondering what the next meal is and what game I'll waste the evening playing: to whatever is easiest for my jailers to manage.</p>
 				<p>I'm finally outside <a href="../../../poetry/g/the-golden-cage.txt">the golden cage</a>, and the world outside that I'd managed to convince myself wasn't real <em>is</em> real, and it's so wide and yet so restricting all at once.</p>
-				<p>Managed to convince <em>most</em> of myself, for some spark of <a href="../../../poetry/f/firebrand.txt">whatever the hell</a> I felt past January <a href="../september/sign-of-life.html">still burns within</a>.</p>
+				<p>Managed to convince <em>most</em> of myself, for some spark of <a href="../../../poetry/f/firebrand.txt">whatever the hell</a> I felt past January <a href="../09/sign-of-life.html">still burns within</a>.</p>
 				<p>And whatever that spark is must have been enough, for I bit the bullet and walked for an hour to the local library. I jayran across busy highways. I passed by the trail on which I had a mental breakdown one day in gym class, abusive gym teacher yelling at me to go faster, even though my legs were stone and my bike was two creaks away from collapsing, so close to home and yet so far away, always so far away. I took the long way, the way my phone told me to go, and then realized upon seeing one of the local hotels that there was a shortcut waiting for me all along.</p>
 				<p>There are two little kids running around the library. A slightly older girl is brave enough to walk around in public with a bunny-ears headband and an unironic Minions jacket. At the table next to mine is an overweight man with a Vietnam Veteran hat on gambling away his money on a shitty Chromebook that looks like it was stolen from the high school. Coughs boom from the downstairs bathroom as if they were heralds of an oncoming earthquake, even though we don't get earthquakes here in God's Asscrack, Minnesota.</p>
 				<p>On the walk home from college, late at night long after the sun had gone to sleep, passing by the chapel on the way to the dorms. I turn to my left, and I see the highway sloping down the hill. A million glittering lights, drivers that I will never meet, whose paths will only cross mine in this one sliver of time and then never again. And framing the road on both sides is a forest that spans as far as the eye can see. A veritable force field- a modern moat to protect the campus from the outside world.</p>