#hopigotthetagright

[vonnythemuse]

I am 15.000 days old today.

I woke up early this morning, or rather, this night; not because I set my alarm, but because I needed to go to the bathroom. While there I remembered I had seen a post on tumblr just as i went to bed last night, on self defense for a specific target group that I wanted to read, but had failed to save.

I decided to search for it using a tag I expected to be in there, because I was still kinda sleepy. Instead I found that tumblr had nuked the account of a user, after this user had complained for a year or so about continual harassment, on the basis of mislabelled sexual imagery (fully clothes transition pictures).

I got sucked into this narrative, even though I don't know any of the people involved. I only use the platform of this CEO who decided to have a public meltdown on this topic, citing a post by said nuked account concerning hammers and exploding cars in a very tumblr-esque way, which wasn't cited in the ban report. But this hardly makes me an expert on the situation at hand.

I see lots of posts, of many people, showing solidarity. Pictures of their own transition to see if they'll get banned too.

Should I show my solidarity this way? My own transition is so long ago, the programs used to store my current photos didn't even exist yet. I'd have to go home and take a picture of an old photo, lying forgotten in a cabinet.

Oh, yes. I've turned 15.000 days and I'm not at home reading this, I'm on holiday, reading about how a website I've not been using for that long didn't seem as supportive of who and what I am as they claim to be. No surprise there, I've seen this before, I'll see it again. I think of my younger friends, who just started their own transition process, and wish it didn't have to be like this. That I didn't have to see this again, that they'd never have to see it.

I read all this, huddled half under my blanket. I don't want to wake my wife, she'll just tell me to not read this kind of stuff. Turn away, keep my head down. I get it, she's not under threat, and in my daily life I can be pretty open about who i am and who I was, with friends and even at work. I'm privileged in that way, having experienced only minor harassment in my real life, and tell myself that this isn't because I learned very quickly which places to avoid and when and how to keep my head down. Being open about who i am feels like an act of rebellion sometimes. I hope, and genuinely think, that doing this allows my colleagues to experience that we're just normal, kind people too. That I'm doing my part in some small way.

I'm 15.000 days old today, and I wonder when walking across the street and being in public becomes dangerous to me too. Like, more dangerous than it already is. Mixed in with the posts I read this morning, are reports of the death of a non-binary kid of 16, bullied to death in the United States. What a world to live in. What a world to be 15.000 days old in.

My alarm goes off, my normal work day alarm because even if I'm on holiday i prefer to keep my sleep schedule intact. I get out of bed, letting my wife sleep a bit longer. I greet my family in law, with whom we're on holiday with. I don't tell them about what I've read either, they will understand my worries even less.

I'm 15.000 days old today, and I worry about the future, and I worry about my friends and my friends' future, what it has in store for them.

But worrying about my friends also makes me think about my friends. How kind and supportive they are. How kind and supportive I can be for them. How I can maybe be the role model I never had, even though times have changed so much I have no idea how any of this works anymore.

I think of my friends, and feel warmth and solidarity. So here's to them being amazing, and me being amazing, and it's being amazing together. What a world to be 15.000 days old in.

And I write a post about hammers and exploding cars because I don't have my old pictures at hand.

#trans #transgender #lgbtq+ #lgbtq #poetry ???? #vonn.txt #predestrogen #predstrogen #hopigotthetagright #trans rights #nex benedict