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cosmolinguistEvery time I step outside I am struck by how good the air smells this time of year. It smells sweet and green and makes me appreciate topsoil. I live in a city but I still am surrounded by growing things.
conulyconulytielanmarycatelli posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
book_lovecosmolinguistBefore he left for his date this evening, D asked me "after dinner, why don't you ask [local pal) if they want to go for a pint at [place]?
It is wonderful weather for a beer in the sunshine (still 67°F!) so I can see why he asked this.
But I already had such a busy day of meetings, most of which actually involved thinking really hard, that I was already tired of thinking and talking before my counseling session started.
Some very thinky meetings today: a small group trying to wrap our heads around a proposed new train ticketing system which we have to understand well enough to anticipate what barriers it poses to disabled people, and more internal meetings which have been pretty navel-gazey lately. Last year's restructure means we're working on revising our Purpose (which needed doing, the last one was terrible, but while I love this abstract stuff it's something a lot of people struggle to engage with. And we're doing a theory of change to a new model which I actually think is worth what we paid for the consultant who brought it to us, because it's getting us to ask questions like "how will we know if our campaign has been successful?" but also that's very hard to answer sometimes when you're dealing with things that resist easy measurement or even baselining. And also there are just so many things I don't know, nobody here knows: how do various processes internal to a local/combined authority work? Who is responsible for the Scottish cycling guidance?
So yeah. It's been nice to just spend the evening eating my pizza and listening to chill ambient music and reading my library books.
cosmolinguistI have so far enjoyed the podcast Be Gay Solve Crimes, where three trans women assert that all detectives are transgender.
I love the premise (I'm even paying for the bonus episodes!), but after a dozen or so episodes I'm increasingly unsettled that these fictional male detectives are mostly talked about as "eggs" (a word some trans women use for their pre-transition selves; the moment of coming out to themselves is described as "their egg cracking"), and these fictional women are mostly talked about as fully-formed trans women.
The occasional background character is claimed to be transmasc, so it's not exactly erasure I'm complaining about. Feels more like a version of "the only good thing a man can do is transition,"* which is a possibly-unkind* shorthand I've adopted for the feeling I get from online spaces or statements that position themselves as universally trans but then end up being about things specific to (white) trans fems/women.
I've been telling myself I'm being unfair and too sensitive. But today's episode about Nancy Drew is making me sad. (Partly because it makes me wonder if Harriet the Spy is a certainty for a future episode as I'd initially thought it'd be; is that also a literary fixture only for USians?)
There's nothing wrong with knowing your audience, but to hear early in this episode "If you're a boy -- which, I imagine, that's not many people listening! you might find out something really important real soon!" in this episode about a girl I related strongly but differently to when I was a kid reading all these books. I can understand wanting to identify with a girl who's strong and clever and who barely even has a boyfriend and who's a bit odd -- this is the premise of the podcast really: the kind of detectives you get in fiction are of course very different from the people they're surrounded by, and once you feel (at least) one kind of difference it's easy (or easier) to feel affinity with other people who don't fit in.
And while there certainly are -- and, I hope, more all the time! -- fully-realized trans women who are in the vague older-teenager age range that Nancy Drew is, fully au fait with the Online touchstones that indicate a woman is trans (whether that be a disinterest in male partners or what the hosts perceive as an old chunky laptop which would've been cutting edge when the movie they're watching, from 2007, was made but they're all such infants that they were in elementary/primary school then so only know such things as hallmarks of retrocomputing and/or poverty), this isn't what I was expecting from the podcast.
I expected some of the assigned-female-at-birth characters to be pre-transition men. I expected their reading of Poirot to be transmasc -- he's short, he's dapper, he's obsessed with his mustache... he's right up there with Gomez Addams in this feels like an exaggerated stereotype except I also know people who are literally like this levels of transmasc representation.
And it's not just characters but their reading of characteristics that baffles me sometimes.
Anyway, that's more than enough sartorial commentary from me, far more than I ever thought I'd do. But the point is, it's really odd to have stuff that's so obviously one way for me described as so obviously in a venn diagram circle that doesn't really overlap with that at all.
Writing this all out did make me feel better: I enjoyed the podcast episode more, and in talking about this on fedi I ended up wiht two new library books: Harriet the Spy and a recommended book with a transmasc Watson (The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall), which I'm looking forward to.
*: Though, potential unkindness aside, it seems I'm not even exaggerating: a Black transmasc activist that I know has told me that he's heard people say this in as many words: the only good thing a cis man can do is transition. Oof.)
tielanrmc28:dorchadas
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sashagee's health was really bad, so I didn't get tickets--by the time I actually felt comfortable buying, any seat that would have been reasonable had been snapped up by scalpers and I would have had to pay close to $1000 to go. So when we missed it, I thought that was that and we had lost our only chance. Imagine my surprise when CSO emailed me that there was going to be another performance, and this time we had the money to buy tickets (still expensive but not four figures expensive). So, we did:
marycatelli posting in book_loveconulyconulydorchadas
cosmolinguistEdit: My phone has been resuscitated. It still probably needs replacing soon, but it's nice that I can have a chance at making sure the stuff that should get backed up is actually backed up, etc. There is a plan for this to happen, but I am so relieved that it isn't urgent.
So here is my account of the annoying 24 hours I just had.
3weeks4dreamwidth hooray, but I feel so out of touch!I'm so tired.
dorchadassashagee that we have a top-loading washer because she was sick of trying to keep a side-loader clean. The drum of the new one is larger than the old one by at least a third, not even counting that you can't load a side-loader as much because it uses less water than a top-loader. sashagee this, I think every other part of the new setup is a downgrade. There's no light inside the dryer drum so if I want to turn it on at night I have to turn on the washer closet light, which shines directly into the bedroom; it's louder; the display and controls are analog instead of digital; there's no way to pause and resume the dryer cycle; and it's taller than our previous machine so we had to take down the shelves on the top of that closet and now there's nowhere to put our laundry supplies up there. But, we're stuck with it now so I'll have to get used to it.
conulyconulycosmolinguist - Hooray for springconuly - Never agreeing to do totally insane hours againconuly - Paraphrased comments in the phone game team chattielan - the delightful feeling of having fixed an issuemarycatelli in book_love - The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 7cosmolinguist - Tired braincosmolinguist - Harry the spytielan - The Last Memedorchadas - The sweet greenstielan - bits and pieces of lifeconuly - (no subject)dorchadas - Hisaishimarycatelli in book_love - Alchemist of the Wildsconuly - (no subject)conuly - A note to two dads of little girlsdorchadas - Tried a new shul for Shabbat evening servicescosmolinguist - Things I have missed since my phone died last nightdorchadas - Finally, washed upconuly - Worked a different place todayconuly - Dear fic writer:timeasmymeasureforests_of_fire
