“Even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all”
Maybe if I repeat it to myself over and over and over again I’ll end up believing it… *sigh*
Cool it down and shoot it, that’s the only way to deal with bad coffee. Eugh.
But then I’m a coffee snob, and if it even has the slightest hint of burn in it, I don’t wanna finish it. (Hey I’m both a designer AND a developer, it was meant to be!)
NZ and Aus are some of the biggest coffee nuts on the planet, and turn their noses up at pretty much everything though.
But srsly, here’s how to shit on someone’s day: hand them a coffee that’s burnt, watery, curdled or overly bitter. BLUUUURGH.
About the whole ‘ask me about my pronouns’ thing.
This one bothers me.
As a trans* person myself, I would ultimately prefer to be referred to as one thing over the other - the opposite of how I appear - and there is no harm in people clarifying this with me at any stage. Better than wild assumptions being made.
Fair. Yes?
However, for the average Joe on the street, the 99%, this is a rather rude thing to do. Rush up to a lady and ask her “Are you a boy or a girl, how do you identify?”… you’re probably gonna fuck her up for the rest of the day, and she’ll be picking her appearance to pieces. Most people, unlike us, are confident in their appearance matching their gender…
…which basically means it’s just as horrifying to them to have their gender questioned, as it is for us to be misgendered.
It’s all a nasty catch-22. Again, I’d prefer to be asked. But the average person on the street is 99% likely to be one of those people that would be insulted by such a thing.
In short, I think it’s wise to remember that the ‘ask me about my pronouns’ thing is heavily centralised to the trans* communities, and that it’s awkward and potentially bad to apply to society in general. The people that matter will become more in tune with us and be able to sense what the actual answer is - there have been some very cool posts on several blogs about people either giving or recieving such respect, which is nothing short of awesome.
My suggestion? I don’t know, I really don’t. All I know is that it’s a reckless thing to push the ol’ asking people what they prefer out into the general arena.
It all comes back to treating yourself as an individual, rather than as the central force of society itself.
924) I was flipping through a women’s health magazine today. In an article about the healtiest foods for women, one of the best was pomegranate, for to its ability to help maintain healthy levels of estrogen. Next time I go to the store, Im going to buy lots of pomegranate seeds. It probably wont do anything to help my estrogen levels, but it’s worth a shot!
Not wanting to put you off what is a VERY healthy fruit with all sorts of wonderful health benefits, but I suggest reading an alternative source of info to a women’s rag about it: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10803854
Doing it myself (as I’m trying to raise testosterone, not oestrogen) and uh yeah. It does as prescribed in the article. HORNY ALL THE TIME, increased muscle mass and the works.
As a web developer, I feel I am qualified to ask this. As someone twice legally blind uncorrected, I feel even more qualified to ask this.
What the FUCK is with everyone jumping on the bandwagon of making their body copy impossible to read!? Is this some sort of Tumblr game I’m…
Not under most circumstances, no, certainly not! I’ve very rarely used it, unless it’s as, say, a heading. It really does need to be QUITE large to be legible, simply because it fades into ALL THE THINGS.
This has been the problem since the beginning of the interwebs, though; unskilled people being given access to either the basic ability to code, or something that will vomit code out for them (I’m looking at YOU, MicroSloth, and all your terrible inline styles and font tags!). All very well to be able to plough your thoughts online but without somewhat thoughtful user-experience (UX), what’s the point? Just gonna make y’all look 16. :P
Glad someone aside from myself is sick of squinting at the screen trying to decipher wtf is written… often only to find poor spelling, shocking grammar and questionable thoughts in the first place.
2500) I feel like, as a dom, queer trans guy, no-one will ever take me seriously in bed
Um what. Dream on. I’m all of the above (minus the queer, I don’t discriminate) and my partner, who is twice my size, takes me very seriously.
(via ftmconfessions)
2517) I haven’t even started T yet, and it drives me crazy. I always watch shit like Jackass, Viva La Bam, and all that sorta stuff where it’s just a bunch of guys being guys. I love it, but I literally feel like pumping myself full of T afterwards because I just feel like I’m never going to have that. I want to be that guy so badly. I’m 20, and I’m not even out to my family yet. Is it too late for me to have that life?
Better fucking not be too late, I’m 25 and in the same boat.
Also, what’s stopping you from being a jackass on your own with the boys as is? Go and live your life. Good lads will see the real you in due course, testosterone or not. Take it from someone who’s currently doing just that, despite tits.
(via ftmconfessions)
2522) I’m so desperate to get rid of my breast that I stopped eating. I have no intention to start eating till They are at least an A cup. They are DD right now.
As all of the other comments say… quit that shit, you will be dead before they shrink to even a C. Because breast tissue is not fat, it’s permanent tissue that needs to be removed by surgery.
Again, all the other comments are correct - you will lose muscle mass before you lose fat. This is the opposite of what you want to do.
Get your arse working out and saving for top surgery before you start pulling starvation stunts.
(via ftmconfessions)
2527) I really want to have top surgery but I don’t want bottom surgery because I love having a vagina. I want to legally change my name because my birth name is too girly and obviously I want to change my gender, but I don’t want to be a straight man, I like being a lesbian. I want to get rid of my girly voice but I don’t want to go on T because I don’t want body hair or facial hair. I feel like I don’t deserve to be part of this community.
That’s because this is the FTM community. There’s no level of ‘deserving’ required, but simply this isn’t your target audience. No hard feelings. We’re people born in female bodies that don’t want a bar of it, we ARE men but with some pretty epic-fail birth defects. For the most part anyway. There are a few folks that don’t fit the bill but want to anyway. Your choice if you want to be one of the lost here or not.
Fact is, your identity is no less legitimate than ours; the thing is, they are DIFFERENT. Not inferior or superior, but frankly different. FTM is female-assigned people actually being males inside. If the latter bit doesn’t feel right to you, then it isn’t. Straight-up.
I want nothing more than to wake up with a penis and a flat chest, and an extra foot of height. My vagina and I have disagreements, but it gets put through its paces when it needs to, and this doesn’t make me less of a man. It’s just there. I don’t love it. This doesn’t mean you can’t love yours, it means you and I are different. I am FTM. Are you?
You are a lesbian that loves her vagina. You wish to have a deeper voice and a flat chest, but nothing else that would make you male. It’s okay to identify as that, you know? It’s just fine, you are still an awesome human being for it. It’s just that you’re not FTM for it, because you lack the M part of that identity. Being female doesn’t mean you have to by Girly-girl-girl-McGirlFace with a side of sparkles, but you know this. Looks like you’re butch, rather. And that is just fine :) Ride that fucker with pride!! With a side of upsetting the binary if you wish. Why not.
(via ftmconfessions)
Hey guys it’s one of the many Kaiden’s, I kind of have an issue..
I’m the type of guy that likes to stand out, and not be the same as everyone else. It’s come to my attention that there are A LOT of Kaiden’s inn the community.. And I would like a name that not practically everyone has.. I don’t mind my name, and everyone is finally getting used to Kaiden and I go by kaiden at school now.. But I’m getting tired of the same name as everyone else.. So I need opinions, should I keep it kaiden or go with one of these: I need your help..Tyson, Memphis, Beckham, Austin or Brayden??? My middle name is Wyatt, and I’d like to keep it like that..
Any of the ‘_aiden’ names (including Aiden itself, and the BILLIONTY different ways of spelling it) are all too common in the FTM community and are also age-inappropriate for any of us over five or so - a cluster of them have been voted the most hated baby names recently, which really drives the point home. They are a default in the trans community, I believe, because they are an excellent intermediary for those of us still trying to shed the ‘female’ identity we’ve been forced to build for circa two decades (less, if you’re lucky). They are not butch like Butch, Mitch, Buck, etc… but they’re almost not girls’ names either.
Needless to say, I’m not a fan of ANY of the trans-trendy boys names.
For those that are still deciding (and this is a process not to be rushed!!), I encourage people to think about who they want to be at 45 years old. Seems like a long way off, but most of us will easily make it… and we need to consider that. For that reason, my shortlist is Tom, Max and James - age-appropriate for a 25-year-old, and timeless. There’s no cuteness to expire on a 50-year-old businessman.
But, as you mentioned, they are vastly too plain for someone wanting to stand out. They are bread-and-butter names, so no real use to you. Why not look at digging out unusual, relatively uncommon or downright awesome names that could have been given to you back when you were a wee lad? Victor, Oscar, Trent, Frank, Edgar, Lloyd, Stanley, Walter, Calvin, Julian… that sorta thang. It’s not Bob or John or Mike or Brad or Matt (srsly, I can rattle off almost 10 Matts I know in person), but it’s not AidenCaidenHaydenJayden or Loki or Mikah either.
The temptation now is to be edgy and unique, but given the first name can run dry within a mere few years, I’d hate to think how difficult it is to manage any of the trans-trendy names in 20 years time when we’re all wearing suits and taking over businesses et al. Or whatever it is accomplished middle-aged men do. :P
Unrelated to blog topic: sort your fuckin’ themes out!
As a web developer, I feel I am qualified to ask this. As someone twice legally blind uncorrected, I feel even more qualified to ask this.
What the FUCK is with everyone jumping on the bandwagon of making their body copy impossible to read!? Is this some sort of Tumblr game I’m unaware of, where we try to deter people from reading all our shitty opinions by way of WHAT IS THIS BLOCK OF TEXT, HOW THE FUCK DO I READ IT?
If it is some sort of how-can-I-break-every-rule-of-typography-in-one-sitting game, I’m out. There’s no prize for someone who a) respects design and web standards, and b) is blind at the best of times.
For those of you that are sitting there going WTF, or AM I UNINTENTIONALLY DOING THIS… read on.
1) For readability, any font size smaller than 9px on a screen is going to be hard to read for anyone that is visually impaired. This includes anyone over the age of 40, where long-sightedness kicks in and the reader is required to sit a mile and a half back from the screen, rendering your small type impossible to see clearly. Optimum is between 11px and 16px.
2) Line-height should be a minimum of 1.3em - that is, 1.3 times the height of your font size. Down to 1em is okay in headings, but NOT in body copy. 1.4em is what I work with when producing a website, of which I will build at least one a week. Trust me, legibility is an art. Sort your line-height. Don’t be obtuse and stretch it out to 2em though!
3) Contrast. Contrast contrast contrast. If the text is too close in colour to your background, it’s going to be shit to read. This is the reason that the standard Tumblr interface is black text on a white background. However, if you end up with opposite colours (red on green, or red on grey), then they will vibrate against each other; your text is quite impossible to read. Consider this when you choose text colours vs your background, particularly if you’re one of those hipsters using a tiny point size so only the truly dedicated can read your shit.
4) Images in the background. For the record, I automatically unfollow someone that’s decided to place text directly over an image background without providing SOME way of making the text legible. If you must have a background image, particularly a high-contrast one, PLEASE for the love of all things good and holy place the text inside a semi-transparent container!! I’ve seen far too many 16-year-old hipsters breaking the internet by placing pink and green text over an animated or otherwise sparkly background, rendering their incoherent ramblings impossible to read.
5) Unrelated, but can we PLEASE stop fucking inflicting our shitty music choice on others? People that play music on their themes leave people no choice as to whether i) they have a slow connection, ii) are listening to music of their own choosing already, or iii) are trying to read quietly. Again, unfollow…and potentially block.
There’s your daily lesson from Mr Angry. If you tick any of the above, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider changing your theme so that others with less vision or more taste can view your shit.
