June 16th, 2023
Happy pride, I suppose. A month where I can mourn the state of the US from my incredibly and increasingly dangerous new home state of Florida. It's been 12.5 months since I moved here from Mississippi, and while I live in a more populated area than I did in MS, the Florida-Man-In-Chief, Ron DeSantis, certainly seems to be worse than Tate Reeves. My period of mourning doesn't end until well after July 4th, which I also stopped celebrating last year after Roe Vs Wade was overturned. In the face of all of these awful and transphobic laws that have no goal aside from making it legal to kill us for existing, making us kill ourselves, forcing us so deep into the closet that they don't have to see us anymore, or making us flee the states that are doing this to us. In their eyes, dead is preferable to closeted. We're political refugees in our own country... or "voting with your feet", if you drank the kool-aid on that particular bit of propaganda.
A quote from Luxander: "That's the thing about "be gay, do crime", or "be trans, do crime". It's not a fun and cute little slogan. It means that when our existence is criminalized, we will continue to exist, and it will be a crime to do it, but we're not going to stop just because they've made it illegal. You should get BIG mad and be willing to do messed up things that are against the rules, because that's the situation that we're in. Push comes to shove, the situation is dangerous. People are dying."
Another from Zooey Zephyr, a trans lawmaker in Montana who was essentially exiled from the floor and participating in hearings for saying what she did: "Then the only thing I will say, is if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there's an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands."
She's also been treated harshly with deliberate attempts to make her feel uncomfortable at work, and being misgendered and attacked constantly by her coworkers in the aftermath of a warning that is falling on deaf ears. The situation is dire. It's going to get worse before it gets better, that's for damn sure. But we're here, we're queer, and we won't disappear.
On the bright side, I guess I am still making progress on my weight loss, even if I gained a little bit of it back massively overeating due to my period making me emotional and hungry.
And yes, I'm one of the lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective on it) few trans women who experiences periods. Obviously not the bleeding part, that would be impossible, but I am experiencing other stuff. Including...
And, these symptoms are present for nearly a week at a time, starting roughly every 25 days since I started keeping track a few months ago. It's incredibly uncomfortable and unpleasant, but I can't help feeling validated that this seems to be happening. I didn't think it would happen to me, but then again, being trans is also an uncommon and improbable-but-not-impossible state, so maybe I should shut up because impostor syndrome needs to have no hold over me anymore.
Is this a blog or a publically accessible web diary? I don't know, lol.