Performative Bullshit

Do you know what really grinds my gears? Performative Allies. I’ve got to a point now in my life where I’m just sick and tired of having to hand hold cis people and able bodied people to just do the most basic of things and I’m tired of them needing the goddamn cookies all the time.

OK, I just want to tell you all this. EVERY TRANS PERSON IS TIRED OF HAND HOLDING CIS PEOPLE!! We may act nice and polite but that’s because we know for a fucking fact that you will throw it in our face if we show frustration. Trust me, you can Google that gender question you might have, and no we probably don’t know your friend that’s transitioning but you are misgendering them through each painful comment you are stating about them. No we don’t need you to comment about how we should be passing and no, your comments about pronouns are just not needed when they have been explained to you 50 million times. We are tired of your little micro aggressions, like telling us we will get treated better when we are nice and polite. We shouldn’t have to confirm to the ideals of passing to be treated like a human being, and stop comparing trans people to drag culture.

Like actually fucking stop that shit

I’m being fucking serious

Being at the Phillip Starr community tent and seeing the portraits of trans people working, right next to drag queens was a fine fucking example of alliship gone fucking wrong. TRANS PEOPLE ARE NOT DRAG PERFORMERS. STOP PUTTING US IN THE SAME CATEGORY. You can be cis and do drag, you can be trans and do drag but they are not the same fucking thing, and to put cis drag queens next to trans women, you are (all be if unintentional) implying that their presentation is just a performance and not their actual life. It might not have been on purpose and I hope that next year more consideration towards trans people will happen.

I’m not even going to get into the disaster that was even the terrible rubber matting that was used as a “ramp” that caused injury during community day and I’m certainly not going to go into the fact that a member of the public had to assist me with the matting on the grass because IT WASN’T EVEN ACCESSIBLE. LIKE COME ON, ELECTRIC WHEELCHAIRS AND MUD DON’T MIX BUT YOU KNOW, WHATEVER. I am going to add though that apart from that , community day was amazing, if was lovely to see so many people and I really hope lunch positive got a lot of money for the work they did on that day and the prep day a few days previously.

Everyone acts like they do everything in their fucking power to help disabled people, but Brighton fucking sucks if you are disabled and honestly no one actually does make things easier for us to just get about in our day to day lives. We don’t want fucking parties run in our honour and we don’t want fucking perks. We want venues to be accessible, we want to be treated with respect and we don’t want companies saying they will help us and when the cookies dry up, you then forget that we fucking exist.

Maybe actually help your disabled friends when they need it. For examples STOP GOING TO VENUES WE CAN’T GET INTO. Do you know how shit it is for us to see you all go to venues with zero access for disabled people, or for that matter, friends going to venues where the staff are problematic and cause pain?? Yeah, we know that there are loads of you that STILL go to venues that have ablist, transphobic, racist and anti Semitic staff members. You don’t think we don’t notice this shit. You then come to us saying “oh we want to help” but don’t do anything. Here is something you can do.. STOP SPENDING MONEY IN SHIT VENUES. And I’m saying this especially to my LGBT friends, cause you do this shit more than the cis hets. Your performative bullshit is just as fucking annoying, if not more so because we fucking expect better from you. STOP GOING TO PLACES THAT ARE FULL OF SHIT HEADS!!

I know I sound like a huge party pooper but Jesus fucking Christ this has become fucking frustrating. You are literally giving money to things that cause us pain, and that means there is nothing going to the places and things that actually support us as trans and disabled people. Actually support trans and disabled business. And not just do it for the fucking cookies but for us to actually improve our lives.

Give us a fucking platform worth having and pay us for our labour or fuck off .. We are done with your bullshit, no more free cookies till you help us!!!

My Internalised Phobia

I think I said a lot when I posted about my feelings on this post about my struggle with being in my chair, and recently that whilst I am really comfortable about talking about being in a chair, I don’t actually like being seen in it. Which is bizarre because ITS NOT LIKE IT’S NOT FUCKING INVISIBLE. 

I’ve had to keep myself pretty grounded recently because being seen in a chair, being seen as visibly fucking disabled actually terrifies me more than anything else. It makes people treat you differently and how I often treat myself at times.

I will internalize most of the bullshit that goes on, and peoples ablist remarks because at times I feel like I deserve it. I constantly think “am I actually disabled though” in my head, even though I know in myself that I bloody well am. These intrusive thoughts do not go away. 

What even is “being disabled enough” and what the fuck does it even look like? 

Why do I constantly self doubt myself, even though it’s obvious that I shouldn’t be feeling like this. 

What the fuck even is life? 

New Year – New Start

When we start on the 1st of January, we have all these wonderful ideas of resolutions and promises to ourselves that by February we have either forgotten or broken. I realised that I would always do this to myself and suffer the bizarre guilt it gave me after failing at a task I shouldn’t be forced to give myself just because society tells me to. 
Last year I had made all these promises about how I would write more, be more involved and we just do better. And in truth it suddenly forced me to try and do stuff no longer for myself and my enjoyment. Hell, right now as I’m typing this on new years eve, smoking a cigarette after promising myself for the 18th time that I would quit for good, I’m still plagued by guilt of all the things my head tells me that I failed to do this year. 

I even gave up on writing, not one but two books. Scrapping my work was probably the hardest thing i did in 2017 and the truth was, I knew I wouldn’t have completed it. I stopped blogging for months, because well, I couldn’t face it. I had felt like I had failed, when the truth of the matter is, I was really fucking sick. 

Finding myself now at a point in my life where I could no longer pretend that I was well, both mentally and physically was a blessing to me. Sure being in a wheelchair 90% of the time and being so tired I can barely move to go to the toilet really doesn’t sound fucking glamorous but it put EVERYTHING into perspective. I really needed to give myself a break from time to time and not beat myself up anymore for the things I could no longer accomplish. 

Last year, just before I got sick, I wanted to start up a Brighton publication for LGBT writers to have a platform to write articles. This was based on the fact that whilst Brighton does have a free one, it doesn’t serve a purpose for a huge chuck of the community. I still have the account set up but nothing got done with it. I felt so disappointed in myself, but I realised that I couldn’t because, I am not in a position to run this by myself and two sometimes it’s just not the right time. This year I would like to start making headway on it, but if I  can’t, I can’t. I shouldn’t feel guilty for things I am too tired to do anymore. 

This year I’m going to focus on recovery from last year. I’m going to slowly get myself back into writing. I’m going to slowly get back into doing more things that I enjoy. I want to go back and actually go back to my roots. I have spent so long being an adopted parent for everyone at times, that I had almost forgotten who I actually am anymore. 

And if I don’t manage to do this stuff, then fuck it. At least I tried and I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. 

Queer Dating – Special Edition – Part One

CN – discussions of a sexual nature and cis nonsense ™

To celebrate the 2 year anniversary of the “Queer Dating” series start up, (yes it was 2015) I thought I would go back to where it originally came from and do some research. That’s right folks, this half cyborg agender fool has taken up grindr again for science. The difference is this time, we are going to download several apps and see what the big deal is with dating in regards to being disabled and trans. 
All of my profiles on each app, point out in my discription that I am trans masculine and I am a wheel chair user right from the start. 

DAY ONE

So I downloaded grindr. As always the first port of call to all of this. Firstly, app is broken slightly. I am unable to upload pre taken selfies and i am doomed to take the worst front facing selfies on my terrible phone. I am not off to a good start. I’ve even tweeted and emailed grindr about this issue. 
Within the first hour, I have received 2 blocks and someone trying to message me about being trans and wearing dresses. The blocks were a sudden panic based on the fact that I was a chair user, and well the other one was by sheer ignorance that all trans people choose the same pathways in life. 

Then this exchange happened and honestly I think it’s just beautiful 

His response was to straight away ask me if I wanted to meet up right away so he could plow me, and honestly if it wasn’t half past 3 in the morning he may have very well stood a chance, but I wasn’t getting out of bed, waking up Kai, getting dressed and sorting out the chair for that. I said my apologises and that was the last I heard from him. 

The rest of the day I had recieved literally nothing, I blame this solely on the fact that I cannot take a great selfie with a shit phone and people are terrified about the fact I’m gasp Trans and disabled. 

SO I JOINED SCRUFF 

Well I managed to post at least a fucking cute selfie, and done my usual of going straight to the point and said in my bio about being disabled, and well I got one message. 

From Kai, and we ended up talking about what we wanted for dinner. 

Seriously, it is dead on there. I woofed at a few people but I got nothing really back in return. 
This however has been day one and hopefully more will follow. 

Rope Work And Disability

​I recently did a shout out for guest posts and this wonderful person called Bec wanted to share this piece with us all. It talks about rope work and living with disability.

Thank you so much for writing this. 

Things are pretty shit. 4 months ago I had a stroke. I’m paralysed down my right side. Apparently I’m supposed to feel lucky as 3/4 of my brain died and I should have been a quadriplegic. I don’t feel lucky. I’m grateful that I’m starting to move (although I look like I’m in monty pythons ministry of funny walks) but I’m still confined to my wheelchair and can’t do anything without help. I was doing ok, sucking it up and getting on with it, but now annoyingly were being evicted and trying to do anything this house needs seems impossible. There have been times when I’ve broken down crying because I’ve spilt a drink, because it wouldn’t have happened with both hands. People often say that I’m unlucky and I was so young, but it happens and why not to me. It had to be someone. Bastard. My partner has been amazing. He kept me even though I told him to go. He became my carer. He takes me out. He helps bring up my son. He does rope with me. Rope has probably been the most frustrating outcome. We asked so many doctors if rope caused it and we got a resounding no (thank god as there would have been hell of a fight to do it anyway!) I have lost all my pain tolerance and flexibility and I felt like it was something I was actually good at and came naturally and now I’m starting from scratch with lots of limitations. My partner has been working hard for me, adapting ties, getting my stretch better, getting my ability back. And we’ve done lots. We went to a rope convention recently and I think I wanted to go so much last time that’s all I had stuck in my head. I was so glad we’d bit the bullet and gone. Scratched that itch. But being there was so hard. Learning new things meant they couldn’t be adapted. I couldn’t do most. And constantly failing in front of everyone was so hard. No one made me feel bad, but I felt that people were questioning my ability and if it was right for me to come. I broke a few times, so aware of how abnormal I was. It was important to me to be seen to be trying though, that this limitation didn’t have to stand in our way, that being me, expressing my sexuality was still important. Limitation never have stood in my way. I’ve always been proud to be a fatter bunny and let people see rope was for anyone and the disability has just taken that further. I won’t let get in the way. We actually use the wheelchair during rope when we perform as an extra fuck you! 🙂 we’ve been lucky enough to be invited all over the world to show that disability needn’t stand in the way of what you’re passionate about and that disabled people can have a sexuality too! We’ve been to Russia, Copenhagen, the fringe in Edinburgh, Berlin, London, Glasgow and more! Things are hard, sometimes really hard, but there is a light way back at the end of this very long tunnel. I can’t be more grateful for my partner. He’s amazing.