A Failure To Affirm
From the Reddit forum r/mypartneristrans, a tale of romantic complication:
The feeling of being, shall we say, misled can do that, I suppose.
Twist incoming.
Oh my, a spotlight shared. Awkward. Or, “Woman who wants to pretend she’s a gay man is thwarted by male partner now wanting to pretend he’s a woman, resulting in something not unlike straightness, albeit with extra steps.”
As I said, complications.
Readers are welcome to speculate as to whose feelings are more, er, valid in the scenario above.
And before you ask, the outlook isn’t great:
Update, via the comments:
Regarding this,
Mags adds,
Indeed. A notable omission. One that results in finger-wagging from fellow forum regulars:
It’s a bold claim. And despite which, the person being scolded, a woman who expects to be taken seriously as a man, can’t bring herself to take seriously as a woman her own male partner. There’s no she or her, just a grudging them. Which does rather cast some doubt on the broader enterprise.
Readers who poke through the subsequent replies will note how almost any kind of questioning – even expressions of surprise and concern from an intimate partner – is promptly dismissed as “hurtful,” “transphobic,” and “pretty shitty,” something to apologise for. As if anything short of immediate and gushing affirmation – pretty much any hesitation at all – were an act of wickedness.
Also, this caught my eye:
Which is something of a drawback, given the odds on that matter.
One of the commenters then replies that “drag queen is a look,” by which they mean valid, a possible aspiration, and that one should “interrogate those feelings” that looking like a drag queen is probably not ideal.
Via Rafi.
In other, happier news, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
“occupet extremum scabies; mihi turpe relinqui est et, quod non didici” – Horace
So there!
And once again, this place reeks of class.
occupet extremum scabies?
Ivermectin aut Permethrin!
“I have known precisely one woman who uses a spatula to put on makeup.”
Although I’ve been out of the dating pool for a long time, I’m getting a kick out of watching young women post their Ls on YT sites like Dating Delusions and Modern Women Archives Reviews. One in particular was arguing that men should always pay on the first date because she uses expensive makeup (like, 2K worth from Dior).
All that makeup, and her puffy lips keep her at a 5.
The more I watch these, I realize we all need a partner to restrain our worst impulses.
A whole new realm of compelling alien trash has just been opened up to me.
Makeup and hair are class markers. If a girl’s mother taught her how to dress classy, do her hair, and put on makeup, she can look elegant, well-off, and smart. If not, and she follows fads and her friends, she can look absurd and low-class.
For example, the phrase “ditsy” comes from a hair coloring “Ditz” that used to be popular because it was cheap, but it make your hair look….cheap. So “ditsy” to refer to a not too bright, not too classy girl trying too hard.
Apropos of nothing (although the person handing out the glasses could have qualified for that reddit board), I just scored a free pair of eclipse glasses from the Physics department and have my alarm set for 30 min or so from the max point of the thing as a reminder to emerge from my burrow and greet the (mostly) dark. Hey – 98% is close enough for guvmint work, and it doesn’t cost me a thing. Street corner sellers were out in force selling glasses yesterday – don’t think I’d trust them even if they were giving them away. Of course it’s cloudy right now, so there may be nothing to see.
Wiktionary disagrees, says it derives from German. Sorry. My OED and Webster’s New World dictionaries don’t even list it.
Live feed, currently from Mexico.
Heh.
[ Awaits reports from eclipse watchers. ]
The sun is being eaten! More sacrifices are needed!
I saw a total eclipse in August 1999, in a garden in Oxford. It was pleasingly eerie. The birds fell silent and all the shadows briefly took on the shape of crescents.
Fenris swallowed the Sun.
Seems to have coughed it back up.
[ Awaits reports from eclipse watchers. ]
98% is still pretty bright, as it turns out, coming as it did close to midday. Although there was a weird dimness to the light quality. The birds went silent, but they usually do around this time. The mockingbird is back singing lustily so I guess it’s over. My ancient phone camera wouldn’t show anything but a blob, but the leaf shadows were thin crescents, so that was pretty cool.
I have a vague memory of an eclipse while I was in grad school in the desert SW – seems as though it did get dark, but I could be mis-remembering. I’m sure the Interwebs know.
Just in time. We’ve run out of virgins.
But the Scottish Parliament is unworried: They have thousands of virgin sheep.
And no pesky zippers to startle them.
I’m guessing the oddly sharp crescents – mostly seen under trees, I think – are the result of some kind of pinhole-camera effect and a lack of ambient, scattering light. I remember enjoying the sense of Larger Forces At Work.
For those who may have missed it, very much Moon-related.
It not just what mom taught, but the continued expectations (& willingness to discipline) the young teen girl whose brain is wired during puberty to want to follow her friends and shove against parental control. You know, dad (and/or mom) standing at the bottom of the stairs ordering the youngling “back to your room and change those clothes! You are not going out of the house looking like that!”
As someone close to sliding into her 7th decade on this planet, I was first allowed minimal makeup (after lessons) in high school. Was there a few compromises based on fashion? A few — just enough to make me feel I won something from mom. Looking back (and having raised 4 daughters) I am both grateful to a mom who stayed mom rather than my “friend” and taught me to have a healthy attitude towards makeup (“if your makeup is noticed as makeup, you’re doing it wrong”) AND budget. There is no flippin’ reason (except bragging) to spending $2K on makeup especially when you’re under 30. Yikes.
That was indeed very nice. But I wouldn’t do that today without armed guards.
[ Fetches cushion, shawl. ]
Fetch . . . the comfy chair!
I’ll just leave this here.
[ Raises hand. ]
I’ll be sliding soon, too.
May I have a cup of tea, shawl, and comfy chair?
But sometimes I feel quite young at heart.
So, how about a gallon of massage oil and one of the girls next door?
Pipe and slippers can be rented at the bar.
The eclipse thing that everyone was all juiced about..how it looked here. Yes, I actually looked..through the clouds…and I’m still here. If what does not kill you makes you stronger, I expect to develop some sort of superpowers. Will let y’all know what develops…
A nice animated map of the North American eclipse path.
However, this seems to be, by far, the most awesome view of the eclipse. (Sound on)
Eclipse crescents
“I just don’t have a lot of money at the moment.”
Didn’t see much of anything like that, not like the partial eclipse a few months back.
[ Awaits reports from eclipse watchers. ]
I live on the fringe of the “totality” path. Started driving south into the totality about 20 minutes before the peak. It was freaky. The automatic headlights came on well before it was really dark. Was wondering if the colour of the light (K) affected the sensors. Still it was very eerie. A very dusky twilight. Didn’t last long though. Couldn’t take a picture, I was driving.
I’ll just leave this here.
Looks suspiciously like Hump Fat.
We had the totality, or whatever, pass directly over us in 2017*.It was a big deal. It was a very clear day. It got dark(er) but I was a bit disappointed, expecting it to be much darker. No roosters crowing or anything like that. More like a very dark cloud passing over. I almost missed the one today because I didn’t think it would be much of a thing here. Was working on my mother-in-law’s taxes when I needed to text a friend with a question and he…”reminded” me of the big event just about to happen. That’s when I went out to see pretty much exactly what I posted above (not my pic..mine weren’t so good).
I almost missed it because I was getting so very tired of so much of the hype that I started blocking it from my thoughts. Especially the women putting up posts warning people to bring their animals inside. I’m like…WTF? Our society needs to go one of two very hard ways. Either we get women on board with actual critical thinking or we stop taking them seriously about anything at all. The former is going to be much, much, much harder. Especially if the rest of the “men” are too chickensh*t to point out to them how oblivious to simple realities they are. I can’t do that job alone.
*There was a pretty good restaurant named after it that got killed by Covid but there are still a few other small commercial and otherwise references to it passing over here.
I wandered into my back yard to take photos of my blooming Phlox subulata, and my neighbor over the fence, a retired welder, offered me a look through his welder goggles.
I looked, and it was a cookie with a bite taken out. Not much in the way of dimming the light. Could have been the high clouds.
Then I turned on the TV and found live coverage, and as they went from one totality to the next, the hosts reacted as if Jesus had returned, weeping openly and exulting at the totality of it all.
I mean, yeah, a total eclipse is cool and stuff, but it doesn’t change anything. Peace and harmony don’t increase. It’s not even the solstice, which signals the return of the sun.
As for the man with the amputated fingers, he doesn’t actually “identify” as someone who’s missing fingers — his brain/body mapping is off, such that his brain hasn’t registered those regions of his fingers, so they seem alien to him. Unfortunately, the result is obsessive thoughts about the alien appendages, to the point of disrupting his life. He can’t ignore them because his brain is wigging out whether he likes it or not.
I almost am OK with him getting the unmapped flesh removed, IF it actually brings him relief. If after 6 months his brain finds something else to bitch about, maybe other remedies should be pursued.
I expect to develop some sort of superpowers
Something something cheerleader something world.
Either we get women on board with actual critical thinking or we stop taking them seriously about anything at all
Sooner or later…
Ooh, this. We just had an eclipse in 2017. It’s like no one remembers that? Even here people were a bit over-the-top about it. We had the 2017 one pass directly, 100% overhead vs. this 2024 one for which the totality was 500 miles away at its closest. Been there, done that, literally still have the t-shirt.
I noticed that too: Sensationalism is what they sell, which is bad. But as a bonus, why should I respect adults who behave like little children?
Yes, I remember that from a partial eclipse in my childhood. Our eyes automatically adjust to dimming light while even a largely obscured sun is very bright.=
Well, the winter solstice.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Given the daily servings of awful news (much of it in the U.S. due to the truly awful administration) the frenetic reactions of the orthodox media are understandable as an attempt at distraction.
Newsies: “Me! Me! Pay attention to me!”
Given the topic of this post, I was too afraid to open this at first…
BTW, I went to a show in London last night and spotted 3 MFT trannies, 2 in the gent’s toilets (so at least that’s something). One would fit right in with those featured here, middle-aged, balding but bright green hair, and a fancy dress it had to ask someone else for help with the catch!