A Few Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus Carolinensis) From This Morning.

The Mailbox was a swinging place this afternoon...

Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

if someone is talking about how much they love their parents do not jump in and start venting about your issues with your parents. if someone is venting about their issues with their parents do not jump in and start talking about how much you love your parents. peace and love amen swag city

house sparrow. eläintarhanlahti, helsinki jan ‘25

It is so frustrating to know what it's like to pass as a cis man in a male-dominated field, and see all these experiences of highly privileged trans men in these same fields propped up as the standard.

There is this odd phenomenon where being a transmasculinized individual one is faced with an array of exceptional examples of those like us, while being told these examples actually represent all of us. These examples are supposed to be saying something important about all of us.

Every narrative I was fed as a baby trans, was of exceptional trans men who could only talk about how much better people treated them. Being cis passing and indistinguishable from a cis man was the standard back then in 2016 when I originally came out, and remains as such today. It is disheartening to see that people have no issue with enforcing that expectation, even if "gender liberation" is supposedly important to them.

So to be a boyfaliure, a faggot, someone who faces open discrimination and gender questioning even when I can pass as being plausibly cis, someone who is talked over even when I am seen to be a man with expertise in my field... suddenly Devon Price is the standard I've simply failed to live up to. Even worse for non-white trans men who're made to feel they failed to live up to this white ideal of transmasculinity. When normative and gender conforming trans men write articles about their improved lives, better wages, endless opportunities, they receive an outpouring of support from those who wish to stroke a cisnormative image of transgender existence.

The stories from people like me, they don't feel good to read, they don't let the reader sit back and pat themselves on the back for seeing trans men as "real men" without any challenge to their preconceived notions of manhood (in this case, being a "real man" is being privileged, cis passing, and often stealth with a successful career).

For a reader who feels too challenged, these things are easy to dismiss. Perhaps the transmasc in question is simply "early in transition." If we aren't, then maybe he's just not trying hard enough. Even if "trying hard enough" is a transmedicalist and cisnormative standard which is unfair to apply to trans people, the speaker is simply lying. If they're not they're an outlier- and if they're not, then they are still somehow unimportant. It has to be okay to write transmasculine oppression off as a phase, (or as not having ever existed at all) otherwise it would mean accepting that manhood can't save one from discrimination. It would mean that trans gender doesn't map onto cis gender cleanly and neatly, that old models cannot be recycled to include all of us.

It is very easy to accept that a transmasculine transition ends in privilege and opportunity, after all, the only reason a woman would ever want to be a man is to gain privilege... right? The only trustworthy trans men, well they will tell you stories of their vast wealth of privilege after all.

By these mechanisms, erasure by exceptionalism is reinforced.

Mr. Maxwell Egbert Wickersham III, doggo of destruction, was quite pleased with his latest excavation.

Dan Hays is a British artist known for painting landscapes that mimic low-resolution digital images, often working pixel by pixel. Colorado Snow Effect 4 is part of his ongoing exploration of how technology influences perception. The painting features a snowy landscape rendered in a way that resembles pixelated digital imagery, blurring the line between traditional and digital art.

tbh I really dislike how aphobia tends to be discussed whenever there's some kind of incident that makes it visible to general society. The most common response seems to be some variation of "why would anyone hate asexual/aromantic people, they aren't even doing anything" and it just always sits wrong with me. It paints such a passive picture of our existence and feels like a comment influenced by the level of invisibility that aspec people have in society. Why would you be annoyed by someone who is practically invisible? Just go back to ignoring their existence, it's easy!

But despite the invisibility, aspec people are actually doing quite a lot of things that will piss off queerphobic, right-wing and religious people (and hell, even left-wing people). And the most obvious point is that we are actively not performing heterosexuality the way they want us to. People who's entire world view is "cis men and women should be in monogamous, heterosexual marriage and have (white) babies" are not going to lean back and say "oh but those asexuals and aromantics are fine". They will also hate our guts, and they will come up with all sorts of reasons, including insinuating we're all secretly into bestiality, or mentally ill, or not human, or attention seeking children. It's just plain old queerphobia, and like all queerphobia, there's no inherent logic to it which you can worm your way out of by "not doing anything".

And like, there's a lot more that aspec people do which people hate. Raising awareness about amatonormativity? People feel attacked, they hate it. Asexual people having sex? Or not having sex? People hate it! Aromantic people being in (seemingly) romantic relationships? People fucking hate it! Aromantic people having sex? Ohh people hate that!!

I guess the existence of aphobia can be confusing when you haven't spent much time thinking about asexuality and aromanticism, but in the end, these are identities that aren't heteronormative and they will be hit with the same or similar bigotry as any other queer identity. I just get tired of this response after seeing it recycled for 10 years without ever seeming to go any further.

A Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) having a good look around on the feedlot this afternoon.