Oddtail / is on Nostr

I'm a furry trans girl*. Into geeky nonsense (notably ttRPGs, game design, drawing, linguistics). Nostalgic for early-2000s Internet.
Awkward, but friendly.

DMs generally open, I'm always happy to make a new friend.

A lot of what I post has to deal with politics and/or my being a ball of issues. You've been warned.

If I upset you or otherwise screw up, let me know, and I'll try and be better going forward.

* - gender's a lot, so I'm possibly bigender or genderfluid. Still girl, I think.

Last Notes

2024-11-06 08:58:27

It's some time until the new president is sworn in.
Start planning. Coordinate with your friends. Leave if you can, either by going to a safer state or abroad. If you can't, coordinate and connect with others as best as you can.
And remember this is not your fault, nor is it the fault of whichever marginalised group they're about to tell you it's the fault of. It's the fault of those who voted a wannabe dictator into office. Especially those who "are not bigoted, but". Those who care about their tax breaks just a tiny bit more than about human lives. And who will inevitably start making excuses as things get worse.
Good luck. I'm sorry you share a country with however many millions of people voted for him. Again, start planning. Help those worse off than yourself. Do not hesitate to ask those more fortunate than you for help.
I love y'all. Take a deep breath, take a rest, hug a friend and wait a day or two. And then start planning.

2024-11-04 12:44:55

Inspired by a conversation on Discord:
Let's say you're cis. Not trans at all!
You do know you're still allowed to experiment with your name, outfit, makeup (or lack thereof), your pronouns, whatever you want? Right?
You're a guy with she/her pronouns or a gal with he/him pronouns? That's fine. You want to wear a skirt? You want to eat barbed wire instead of cereal?*.
You're allowed. You can still be cis after all this.
I've met too many people who wanted to explore themselves, but hesitated because they thought they weren't "allowed" that.
If you read this and have impostor syndrome about gender expression? You're not trespassing. You don't have to be "a real trans person" to do anything you want. You have this trans gal's permission.
The Secret Trans Council has spoken through me. We won't send cat-eared assassins after you (unless you ask nicely).
You're seriously not hurting anyone. And don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
And of course, if you're reading these words and they seem to suspiciously resonate with ya, my DMs are open.
*Do not actually eat barbed wire.

2024-11-02 15:23:59

I want to boot into my Windows rather than Ubuntu (I need to do a thing). But I can't change what I boot from, because my keyboard doesn't turn on until AFTER Ubuntu has already started booting. So I can't hit Del to enter BIOS.
Short of fetching a keyboard that doesn't suck ass (because both the keyboards I have handy have this issue), is there any way to go directly to BIOS from my operating system? -_-

2024-10-13 08:59:54

This one is mostly for the cises.
Today I read an account of the "diagnosis" process a young trans person went through.
They were a young teenager, and they came out to their parents (heck yes), and the parents were supportive and took them to a psychologist, because that's almost always a necessary part of getting diagnosed with dysphoria in Poland.
The psychologist asked the kid one question - whether they had come out to their parents in a letter. The kid volunteered information about how and why they were dysphoric and how they figured out they were trans - expecting (correctly) that stuff to be relevant.
The psychologist was completely disinterested and seemed like they just wanted the kid out the door in order to talk to the parents.
As the kid learnt later, the psychologist asked the parents only one question. Does their kid watch anime.
...OK then.
Then, upon hearing "yes", the psychologist assured the parents that being trans is a trend among kids, that it would pass, and warned them to not gender the kid correctly under any circumstances or call them by their preferred name, because that could "do permanent damage" to their psyche.
The parents ended up misgendering their kid to the point of trauma, for months.
The story has a happy ending because they did take the kid to another psychologist, the kid (now a young adult) has been diagnosed and now they are undergoing transition and taking the hormones appropriate for their gender.
But this sort of thing happens often enough that it's not the first such story I've heard. And the diagnostic process took place in a clinic that is "supportive" of trans people.
I've written about my own experiences with a psychiatrist who focuses on "helping" trans people and who openly admitted she believes in autogynephilia, a pseudoscientific idea from the 70s that one guy came up with based on completely wrong methodology and severe cherry-picking and that was discredited within a few years.
Cis people, when you see a trans person express mistrust towards doctors, nurses, psychologists, government officials or anyone involved in the process of transitioning medically:
1) If we talk about it around you, it probably means we trust you at least a little bit. Be effin' thankful. Y'all have no idea how cautious we have to be picking our words in front of some cis people.
2) We are not being tinfoil-hat-wearing anti-science weirdoes. When we talk about DIY HRT, we are not being anti-establishment edgy rebels who do this for the heck of it. Sometimes it's our only safe option. Sometimes it's our only option.
I know many such stories. I reckon most people who've gone through transition know a few, as well.
It's not a universal experience, but it's common enough that I now consider it prudent to assume no doctor or medical professional will be on our side until they indicate otherwise.
And often it's not their individual fault (although it often is), diagnosis is set up specifically to gatekeep transition as much as possible.
I live in Poland, the anus of Europe. So you might think it's different in the West.
What if I tell you that until less than 20 years ago, US medical standards made it at best impractical, at worst impossible to openly be gay/lesbian and want to transition? Because sexual attraction (and it being uhhhh, correct in the eyes of doctors) was a major part of determining if a person is "truly" trans?
Look it up.

2024-08-19 13:09:05

So apparently PinkNews doesn't want to cover trans news because its CEO is worried this might impact advertising.
(source: https://lucyfromnaarm.com/p/breaking-pinknews-refuses-to-cover )
I am speechless.

2024-05-06 12:35:29

Maybe instead of trying to explain that bears are dangerous, men should start wondering what made women even come up with this question in the first place.
But they never do, do they.

2024-05-06 12:35:29

Maybe instead of trying to explain that bears are dangerous, men should start wondering what made women even come up with this question in the first place.
But they never do, do they.

2024-04-24 16:49:36

Sometimes I wonder why I realised I'm a woman so late in life.
And then I remember I grew up at a time where one of the worst things to do to insult a boy was to implicitly or explicitly call him a girl.
And then I do not wonder anymore. Funny.
(it's gotten better in the past few decades. But we're still a LONG way from being anywhere near acceptable, as a society)

2024-03-24 12:58:38

OK, so I need to know. I just need to.
Cis women out there: do you get physically faint due to strong positive or negative emotions? In that you are so emotional you literally need to sit down or lie down?
Because it's very clearly an effect of HRT for me. I have no doubt about that. And I wonder if that's how HRT impacts me specifically, or if that's just how emotions work for cis women.
Mind you - I've already decided it's part of my being a woman. And I love it and I love myself for having that, even if it's extremely inconvenient. Even if it's not a... thing that happens to cis women in this way, I don't care. Cis women do not own womanhood, this is part of MY womanhood.
But I'm still curious if that's... again, a thing that happens.
(please Boost if you're not a cis woman <3 )

2024-03-19 10:05:45

Given that I rediscovered this the hard way the other day...
It's fine to question and come to a different conclusion from your original one. It's fine to delay or limit transition. For some trans people, it's fine to decide not to transition.
It's even fine to conclude you're cis!
What is NOT fine is trying to reject being trans because it feels safer and more numbing in a comforting way.
That's mental self-harm. It's a big deal, and it can't and won't be good for you. Don't do that (she said, after having done that just the day before). It's not worth it.

2024-02-23 16:14:12

If you design a system where you get paid every time you kick someone in the shins, people will start kicking each other in the shins.
But worse, in mere days you'll have people saying "kicking others in the shins is more efficient than talking. Yes, it's unfortunate, but that's the way progress works".
Within weeks, you'll have people saying "kicking people in the shins is bad, but it's better than kicking them in the crotch."
Within months, you'll get confused stares if you suggest maybe we should find a way to STOP kicking each other in the shins.
And within years, inevitably someone will design a system where you get paid every time you kick someone in the crotch.
Progress!

2024-01-26 13:45:37

TikTok showed me a video of a young trans woman who seemed happy and at ease with being trans.
A "concerned" person expressed sadness that she was "ruining her life" at such a young age.
So let's talk about it.
You know what can ruin a life or even end it before one's time? The irreparable damage that hormones do through and beyond puberty and throughout adulthood. It doesn't stop at birth, it doesn't stop at your teenage years.
If you're a cis woman, imagine you start losing your hair, quickly, in your 30s or 40s. Imagine the body hair you have at least quadruples. Imagine your emotions are out of whack, your sense of smell and possibly colour is off, your skin ages rapidly, your waist is like, gone, as are your hips. Your shoulders broaden. It's just the tip of the iceberg. And it'll continue to get worse but that's preventable.
If you're a cis man, imagine you grow breasts, you become physically weaker, your emotions fluctuate to the extent you can't get your shit together, you're too short and didn't seem to grow much as a teen, your voice never dropped. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. And it'll continue to get worse but that's preventable.
Now imagine you stumble upon a young person who's taking medicine specifically to prevent much of what's happened to you. And imagine this person has been told on the regular she or he is ruining her or his life.
Now you have a glimpse of what we the older generation(s) of trans people witness. And why we tend to be protective of young and/or newly out trans people.
It's not that complicated, is it.

2024-01-18 07:15:35

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.

2024-01-18 07:15:35

2024-01-16 11:57:46

- reply

(2/2)
8) This can't be planned for, but y'know the best experiences I've had with cis people? Them just acting naturally like I'm a woman. Like that time at my last job where the tone of the conversation changed instantly and organically when the last dude left the restaurant (I'm one of the girls, yay!). Or when I was asked whether I was gonna be safe taking an Uber home, last Thursday. This is nothing. Women do that all the time. But guess what. I am not used to being on the receiving end of that. And I melted inside.
9) Help us figure shit out. Especially for trans women, fashion and make-up can be very new. We have no idea what we're doing, often. We call being on HRT "second puberty" and it's not just hormonal stuff. We really can be as clueless as you were when you were 11 or 13. And I don't know about others, but I have no idea how to ask for tips and advice. My mom never taught me stuff your mom taught you. My friends in school never had a chance to viciously mock me for dressing unfashionable (not that I miss that. But I didn't go through that gauntlet and I have *no* experience taken from those battle scars). I don't know what I'm doing with basic shit. Help.
10) This is again subjective and personal and YMMV for any trans people reading this, but cis people of our gender - invite us to stuff. I am personally terrified (and I know some other trans women are) for being perceived - or even gaslighting myself into thinking - that I am just into this whole "woman" thing for surface-level interactions or social perks. I'm not. But it's hard to unlearn fearing that. So like, being asked on a girls' night out, or invited to anything gendered - that helps. As long as it doesn't seem like a pity invite, of course. And don't be surprised if someone refuses. I would die of fear if I were to be asked to be like, a bridesmaid (obviously), and I'd refuse. But, y'know, we're out of that part of being women. For men, no idea what y'all do. Invite the trans guy to a belching contest or sparring session or eat a motorcycle together. Sorry, stupid joke is stupid xP
11) Non-binary people exist. And they're not all the same. Pronouns are not an indicator of gender for EVERY person. More about this from your local non-binary person. I'm not an expert.
12) Cut us some slack. I've never been a victim of transphobic violence, even verbal violence really, but I'm still a tangle of terrified anxiety some of the time. And I'm one of the lucky ones. I may well be in the minority on this.
Please Boost the first Toot if trans (and you don't think I'm egregiously wrong), because my social media environment is so trans, I don't know how many cis people will even see this xD heck, if you're cis, Boost this too.

2024-01-16 11:56:56

(1/2)
I've been somewhat negative, but life is not all doom and gloom forever. More people are good than the loud bigots might make it seem. A lot of people do try.
Most cis people in my life are cool, esp. close friends. The rest are just, normal. I've only had a handful of bad experiences in two years of being out.
In that spirit, here's a handy guide for cises on how to treat trans people, from the perspective of a trans woman in Poland - because specific circumstances DO matter! Trans people come in all shapes and sizes and shades of "weird" or "mundane".
1) This should go without saying, but just treat us as the gender or genders that we are. Despite what bigots tell you, we do not want "special treatment". Mostly we just want to go about our day.
2) Being supportive is good, and I personally do not mind comments to the effect of "you are so brave!", because I'm a self-absorbed asshole who thrives on the attention. But most trans people are tired. Think of it this way: some people want to blend and be treated as normal, because we are not abnormal. Being followed with a spotlight is not always what we need.
3) You don't have to pretend we're cis. It's OK to speak up when we're faced with bigotry. In fact, it's crucial. But don't single us out either, because positive othering is still othering. It's a delicate balance. But again - spotlights are not conducive to blending in.
4) Pull us into things that your gender "does". This is speaking from personal experience - I have no idea how women interact. And I do not have the confidence (or experience) to initiate myself into the little cultural rituals that cis women know. Like... women go to bathrooms in herds, right? (sorry). I'd never do that. I have too much impostor syndrome. But if someone said "I need to go to the washroom, would you join me" or whatever (see? I'm THIS awkward, I don't know the script), I would not only agree, but probably die a little inside from sheer happiness.
5) We are accused constantly of pretending to be our gender, or being fetishists, or essentially cosplaying a gender. We put up a confident front because we have to. But we do internalise some of that misogyny. Cis women can probably relate. Help us dismantle that if you can.
6) It's OK to ask questions, provided you understand that the other person may not have the energy to answer them. But I have yet to meet this imaginary trans woman who gets offended at people not knowing stuff. Just don't ask inappropriate stuff. If you wouldn't talk about something to me if I was cis, probably don't ask me (*coughgenitalscough*). OK, I tell a lie, I am ridiculously open about most every topis. But I'm the exception.
7) Normalise thinking that not everything is strictly obvious about gender and gender roles, but do not remember that ONLY when we're around. A good example of good-intentioned allies is asking ONLY trans people their pronouns. It's alienating and cringe. We hate that. Should you ask people their pronouns? Yes. But you should do it ALL THE TIME and yes - ask ppl you're pretty sure are cis. That's the entire POINT. You do not KNOW pp;'s pronouns. If you make the question an implicit statement of "I know you're trans, and I RESPECT YOU SO MUCH", then you're not being a good ally.
(cont. in part 2)

2024-01-15 15:42:48

Fuck it, I need help with this.
You win ten Internet points if you can find me examples of men named Alice. Other than Alice Cooper.
Has to be verifiable in some way.
I don't have much hope and search engines don't help, but I need this for a thing. It's kinda important.
Edit: don't let the CW mislead you. Examples of cis men are fine. Preferable, really.

2023-08-25 13:46:37

Reverse Pinocchio's nose?
Big if true.