Drífa Jónsdóttir @[email protected]

I'm having a GRS and FFS on Tuesday, 23 July 2019.

I won't be posting explicit photos, but I will talk about my experiences. That will, perforce, include graphic descriptions of anatomy. I will CW all of this appropriately.

If this isn't something you want to read, or if you are underage and it would be illegal for me to send these descriptions to you either in US/VA or your jurisdiction, please either unfollow me or refrain from opening these CW'd messages.

One thing I really hate about my culture is its fetishization of competition. We create needless competition in business, sports, politics, etc. Why? It is destructive, it creates more losers than winners, and it wastes resources that could be better used to solve our collective problems. Proponents claim it spurs innovation and achievement. Bullshit: it spurs cheating and gaming the system. Competition of *ideas* is better served by *cooperation* to study them.

I should probably pin Britt's ref sheet.

If you're trans, remember: the point of changing your appearance and presentation is to feel better living in your own skin. Anyone who gives you grief for not meeting some arbitrary standard is welcome to go shag a cactus.

Double, double, toil and trouble. :)

(Art by @knucklebone. Congratulations, BTW!)

Am I the only person who drinks diet tonic water with nothing else in it?

Well, that’s a metric shit-ton of Colcannon

I’ve been trading emails and phone calls all morning with my plastic surgeon’s office and the hospital billing folks. As I suspected, the hospital just ignored what my surgeon’s office told them tried to bill everything — GRS and FFS to my insurance.

Now they’ve at least admitted it and are promising to sort it out. The first stage of that, of course, was to charge me $1,045 (that I actually owed).

Wheeeee.

Eh, it’s edible. The cabbage adds a little texture and color.

What do you get when you fry up a scramble of Savoy cabbage, mushroom-and-soy ‘sausage’, garlic, soy sauce, and egg? I’m gonna find out. Wish me luck.

I just heard an ostensibly smart person defend the electoral college on the grounds that doing elections that way forces candidates b for presidents to appeal to the middle, the undecided voters.

Seriously? Why on earth would I want elections (if we are to have them at all) decided by appeals to people too apathetic or bigoted to have at least decided to vote for harm reduction if they can’t be bothered to actually organize to improve all our lives?

I so loathe advertising that I find it nearly impossible to buy a product I can remember the advertising for. Facing a shelf full of alternatives is often a painful exercise in 'which of these had the most recent and/or objectionable ad for it?'

Probably why Cayce Pollard is one of the first protagonists I ever identified with.

The WaPo has a ‘5 myths about Mike Pence’ piece up. Myth no. 5 is “he hates gay people”. Sure he’s done, evil anti-LGBTQ shit and advocates more, the author admits, but he doesn’t *hate* gay people. His friends and advisors say so, and the writer finds a token gay bootlicker to quote.

^#€£ that noise.

Anti-LGBTQ is as anti-LGBTQ does, and the man’s done more than enough to earn being banned from any position of power or authority, if not a trebuchet ride into the sun.

Snep fren says ‘chuffff’.

Best clothing label ever. (Note the last line.)

Lube might not come in 55 gallon drums but apparently it does come in damn big boxes.

Good morning

And these transgressions are important. They’re not going to change anything on their own, of course. They won’t feed workers on a picket line striking for a better life. They’re not going to keep anyone safe if someone really wants to do them harm.

But it does normalise transgressing a repressive social order. It is seen, and will affect people’s thinking. And that’s not a bad effect for a couple hours’ weekend lark.

I’m in my 40s. A 40 year old person wearing a tiger costume in public is something that Just Isn’t Done. One of my friends brought s tail and wouldn’t put it on, because He Might Be Seen.

Yet here I am, doing the thing.

It’s a transgression that’s entirely symbolic —I’m not going to get arrested or fired for this.

But it *is* a transgression.

I spent several hours yesterday wandering through a shopping mall in the loudest rainbow tiger getup you ever saw. Why?

In part to spend time with friends. And because I really like the outfit, of course.

But there’s more to it: a deeper symbolism.

Don’t tolerate triangulation in politicians. Hold up the people who refuse to compromise away other people’s rights. Fight like hell the people who do that for expediency.

Sure, sometimes progress demands sacrifices. But the only person who can make a sacrifice is the person choosing, without coercion, to take that penalty for others’ benefit. Volunteering someone else to suffer is the same as doing the harm to them yourself.

(There should be a special place in hell reserved for the people who were the cloak of science and use it to confer legitimacy to efforts to systematically mistreat groups of people. I’m looking at you, Charles Murray. Die soon and rot in hell.)

No, you are not entitled to hold the opinion that someone else’s human rights should be denied. No, you are not entitled to hold the opinion that someone else should be oppressed or marginalized—for anything other than posing a danger to others that cannot be mitigated in any less restrictive manner. No, you are not entitled to justify treating other people as lesser based on superstition, wishful thinking, or pseudoscience.

In case you missed it, Elizabeth Warren—whatever you think of her on other issues—defended same-sex couples’ equal rights to marriage with a zinger than went a bit viral. So now, of course, the pundit class is rending its garments with the thought that this might offend bigots, and, hey, aren’t we all entitled to our own opinion?!? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/warrens-same-sex-marriage-quip-captures-what-some-find-exciting--and-others-distressing--about-her/2019/10/11/f3e15a14-ec34-11e9-85c0-85a098e47b37_story.html

And the answer to that, of course, is ‘no.’