Iness Rychlik @inessrychlik

‘Revenge’ (Zemsta), self-portrait.

Still bothered by the US cultural idea that men can only be non-romantically intimate with one another in war-like or competitive circumstances.

I'm pretty quiet about the fact I'm a transman usually, but holy shit I need to tell you about the culture shock I'm going through because it's blindsiding me.

There's a huge sense of social isolation that comes with being perceived as male, because now people are subconsciously treating me as a potential predator. All strangers, no matter their gender, keep their guard up around me.

It made me realize that there is no inherent camaraderie in male socialization as there is in female socialization—unless, of course, it's in very specific environments. And the fact I don't amnbiently experience this mutual kinship in basic exchanges anymore is an insanely lonely feeling.

You know how badly this would have fucked my mind up if I had grown up with this?

It is 4:30am and I'm mourning the loss of a privilege I didn't even know I had.

Anyway, I'm going to figure out how to navigate this. Don't know how yet, but I'm gonna.

Absolutely, because it's an extremely sticky issue.

Frankly, this is something I would've never understood without living the experience.

It's now blatantly clear to me that most cis men probably experience chronic emotional malnutrition. They're deprived of social connection just enough for it to seriously fuck with their psyches, but not enough for them to realize that it's happening and what's causing it.

It's like they're starving, but don't know this because they've always been served 3 meals...except those meals have never been big enough.

This deprivation comes from all sides of aisle, by the way.

In the case of women: When I'm out in public and interact with women, all of them come off as incredibly aloof, cold, and mirthless. I have never experienced this before even though I know exactly what this composure is—the armor that keeps away creepy-ass men.

As someone who used to wear it myself, I know this armor is 100% impersonal. Nobody likes wearing it, and I can say with absolute certainty that women would dump the armor in favor of unconditional companionship with men if doing this didn't run the risk of actual assault. (Trust me when I say women aren't just being needlessly guarded.)

But I only have a complete understanding of this context because I've experienced female socialization. If I hadn't, I would've thought this coldness was a conspiracy against me devised by roughly half of the human population. Even now, with all that I know about navigating the world as a woman, I'm failing to convince my monkey-brain that this armor isn't social rejection.

And as for male socialization? Again, it seems taboo for a man to be platonically intimate with men for reasons I have yet to fully understand, but I think it boils down to a) the fact society teaches boys that it's not okay to be soft with each other, and b) garden-variety homophobia. Our media only shows men being intimate with one another when they're teamed up against a dire situation, and I'd bet real money it's a huge reason why men gravitate toward activities that simulate being teamed up against an opposing force.

But men are not machines of war. Yes, testosterone absolutely gives you Dumb Bastard Brain, but that just makes you want to skateboard a wagon down a hill or duct-tape your friend to the wall, not kill someone.

The human species looks so much colder standing from this side.

I can see how men might convince themselves that their feelings of emotional desperation is personal weakness as opposed to a symptom they're all experiencing from White Imperialism. Because this human connection, this frith, is as essential for our wellbeing as water is.

So sick. How sick. I want to destroy this garbage.

“White imperialism.”

As someone who grew up amab, I can garuntee you “white imperialism” ain’t got shit to do with it. “The Whities” did not create this phenomenon.

Also, statistically speaking, it is INSANELY rare for a woman to assaulted by a stranger. Even less likely than it is for a man to be. Significantly less likely in fact since men make up most of violent crime victims. With that context, it’s pretty damn clear most of that Totally Necessary “Armor” is unnecessary and in fact mostly useless since the main people who assault (especially in a sexual manner) are people you know, often intimately. And I seriously doubt you’re wearing this “armor” around people you trust. And since you also don’t seem to wear this “armor” around women, you’re also only “protecting against” half the threat. Which isn’t very smart.

If you wanted to destroy that “garbage” you wouldn’t act like women need to keep doing it, and wouldn’t place the blame on “white imperialism” as that’s absolving a lot of society of blame and just, as usual, placing the blame on an acceptable target.

I'll reply this in genuine good faith because it's worth it, and I definitely either need to lend context to what I mean by "White Imperialism" or else find a different word for better clarity.

So, when I say we should blame "White Imperialism," I don't mean we should blame "light-skinned caucasian people." I mean we should blame "the strict social norms perpetuated by Christianity, heteronormativity, and colonization, which started with the Roman Empire and wound their way into culture of people we typically refer to as 'white people' over the course of centuries."

To be honest, I've actually been trying to eliminate as many buzz words as I can when I describe this, because buzz words have different connotations to different people, which literally helps no one understand each other better.

But at the same time, I need a word that succinctly describes The Thing That Forces Us All To Conform Or Else We Will Become Second-Class Humans, and I chose the term "White Imperialism" as a nod to its Roman origins and to distinguish it from other forms of imperialism that occur globally. But if people have other suggestions for different words, I'm happy to hear them.

And as for the armor? I genuinely wish the armor was unnecessary. I really, really do. But it is tragically necessary, and it make more sense why it's there when I tell you that this armor actually isn't only to guard against rape. Most of the time, this armor guards against the little, unwelcome advances men make towards women, which happen to women whenever they leave their homes. Daily things. Examples include:

Every woman I know has had these kinds of experiences. They've had them regardless of where they went, what they wore, or what time of day it was. The only think that makes them have these things less? Is the armor, and it's far from perfect.

Here's another vital part to understanding all of this: These experiences start happening to you at an alarmingly young age, so you learn from the time of girlhood to feel threatened by strange men you don't know. It only gets reinforced as time goes on.

These days, people don't look twice at me when I walk down the block, and it's a completely novel experience. I could be a fucking park bench for all they care. But back when I ID'd as a women, the gaze of men would follow me everywhere, like I was some kind of golden object on display for their visual consumption. It's not subtle and it's REALLY not flattering.

(I have yet to get the cis male perspective on why these things are dished out towards women, and what the actual intention is behind these actions. Truly, I'd genuinely would like to hear them, because I think it would help me bridge things more.)

Comrade Attenborough

have i understood this right

@limnaia so this feels accurate 😂

I just heard about the Destiel thing having stopped watching SPN 5 years ago, and as a queer person who isn't ashamed of being queer, I feel fully justified in that decision. Fucking cowards

Animation of Coronavirus spread in the UK - 1st Feb to 9th Oct

Christ, look at it go fuckin’ black while Johnson is still saying it’s safe to go to restaurants.

This is the tone in which my brain talks about everything

exactly this. Only my brain talks in the second person plural, for some reason.

it would take 2.3 million years for Jeff Bezos to earn his $183.3b net worth working 24 hours a day at New Mexico’s $9/hr minimum wage.

That’s 11.5 times longer than the human race has existed.

RICH PEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM

been thinking about appearances and stuff

From J.Wade via Facebook

"Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.

Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.

HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.

Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.

So far the symptoms may include:

Fever

Fatigue

Coughing

Pneumonia

Chills/Trembling

Acute respiratory distress

Lung damage (potentially permanent)

Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)

Sore throat

Headaches

Difficulty breathing

Mental confusion

Diarrhea

Nausea or vomiting

Loss of appetite

Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)

Swollen eyes

Blood clots

Seizures

Liver damage

Kidney damage

Rash

COVID toes (weird, right?)

People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.

Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.

This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.

For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:

How dare you?

How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.

How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:

Frequent hand-washing

Physical distancing

Reduced social/public contact or interaction

Mask wearing

Covering your cough or sneeze

Avoiding touching your face

Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces

The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.

I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance."

This fucked me up for a good 20 minutes.

My anger was my own heart standing over the beaten-down part of me and saying "You may be too whipped to feel it completely right now, but this situation is not okay and how they are treating you is not okay, so I am going to watch your back until you can protect yourself again."

I've been told hanging on to my anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

No. It's me realizing I had the right to stand up from the table and not drink the poison I was being told was the only truth. It's me reclaiming the power I ceded to others in a desperate attempt to survive.

Never. Again.