Sophie Jane @ghost_bird@mythago.space

The Gender Construction Kit has come on a long way since the last time I visited. If you’re looking for info and resources on transitioning in the UK then it’s a good place to start:

https://genderkit.org.uk

“An authoritarian party, which aims at capturing power to impose its ideas, has an interest in the people remaining an amorphous mass, unable to act for themselves and therefore always easily dominated... But we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.”
- ibid

It’s true for some people, but I didn’t “always know” I was trans. With hindsight, though, there’s stuff I missed, or ignored, or explained away over the years that I can interpret as trans feelings now, and I think it might be helpful to write about that. There’ll be a little biography involved but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.

(Private hrt cost me about £800 to set up, in two instalments, plus another £150 every six months for monitoring appointments. They have a shared care agreement with my GP so prescriptions and blood tests are on the NHS. That’s not a negligible amount of money, but it’s possibly more affordable - or crowdfundable - than you might think from hearing about American medical bills.)

(This thought brought to you by Daniel Lavery and “you are God’s only boy and you will wear fire before you wear a dress again”. Which hits me in the feels every time but doesn’t actually stray far from the regular version.)

Thinking about Joan of Arc and suddenly struck by how passive all the pop-cultural takes I know are. Which I guess is the usual Christianity + patriarchy combo bonus, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Joan as someone who knew what they were doing and took conscious chances, say.

(I do not require advice at this stage thank you for not)

I’ve just spent an hour trying to do basic cut-and-paste with Procreate and in conclusion computers bad.

I should take that “instant transition voucher” meme from r/traaaaa, sub in a pac code for the Gender Creation Kit, and print some flyers. Not much point until work opens up the campus again in September, though, I guess.

The food’s gone now, anyway. And it looks like the robins have decided to nest somewhere else - sensibly enough, if this is magpie territory.

The dynamic seems to be wood pigeon > magpie and squirrel > wood pigeon, but the magpies are quicker and less afraid of the squirrel so they’ll dart in when the squirrel drives off the pigeons and grab some food before the others notice them.

Good morning. Pair of magpies at the feeder today, in a complicated standoff with three woodpigeons and a squirrel.

TIL the first science fiction convention was held in 1891, in the Albert Hall, and involved Bovril:

https://www.royalalberthall.com/about-the-hall/news/2016/march/5-10-march-1891-bovril-and-the-first-ever-sci-fi-convention-at-the-royal-albert-hall/

(No, you’re the obvious symbolism shut up)

...and done. I feel lighter for that, even if it was only hanging around in the attic out of sight.

And now, back to bagging up old paper. Nearly done now, if I can stay focused.

If you’re wondering how the avuncular posh prep school worked out... I have better memories overall than the boarding school I went on to, but also a very vivid memory of sitting in an end-of-term assembly listening to a speaker talk about how memory erases the bad parts and magnifies the good, promising myself that I would at least remember this moment, and that I hated my time there.

Sample contents. “Inky”, incidentally, was the headmaster - the school’s avuncular schtick involved calling teachers by official nicknames. (For those unfamiliar with the system, this was a school for boys up to the age of thirteen. Prep for fancy private schools, not college.)

(Underneath it was what turned out to be a zine put out by my sixth form classmates at boarding school. And now I’m triggered 😐)