thetastelessturtle's recent activity
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Comment on How Ben got his penis in ~lgbt
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Comment on How Ben got his penis in ~lgbt
thetastelessturtle (edited )Link ParentThat's a fair counterpoint. I'm annoyed mostly because I'm pattern matching this article to a broader problem. There's been an explosion of public visibility of trans people over the past ten...That's a fair counterpoint. I'm annoyed mostly because I'm pattern matching this article to a broader problem. There's been an explosion of public visibility of trans people over the past ten years. But the type of information that's blown up has been focused on how horrific and strange the medical procedures are, and how (horrific or amazing) and strange it is for people to want to be considered a different gender socially than what they look like. There has been almost no broad discussions of the actual subjective experience of gender dysphoria, what's been tried in the past to treat it, the evidence we have for what does/doesn't work.
This biased visibility has IMO caused a huge backpedaling in trans rights instead of a helping. On average the public sees medical procedures as outrageous and thinks that trans people should "just" get therapy instead. As of a week ago it is now a felony for doctors to give trans 18 year olds medical care for gender dysphoria in parts of the US, vs in the 00s when it was legal (if hard to find). There are many bills on the way that will cause this to happen in more places, and possibly for greater age ranges. Many people are being assumed to be trans in public who could have lived quietly and been treated as their gender before, and now people are getting outed as trans based on their literal scars. I read this article as portraying phallo through a similar lens (here's this shocking procedure and process, people get it because lol gender I guess??, here is where you can go to identify more trans people doing this bizarre extreme thing) and so I see it as playing into the broader problem.
Basically I agree that more info is good, I just hate that the info that is being spread is so selectively chosen for what is going to get clicks and shares. In isolation this would be fine.
Edit for your edit: It's cool, I'm not traumatized by reading it and life is suffering anyway lol. I would disengage if I thought it was doing damage to me and you have been polite. I normally wouldn't comment at all if the only thing I had to say was an emotional reaction, because I broadly find those kinds of comments not worth my time to read and don't want to contribute to the problem. I broke my own rule here because I thought it would be unlikely for another trans man to step in and give a more eloquent perspective, so better than nothing.
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Comment on How Ben got his penis in ~lgbt
thetastelessturtle Link ParentWhat specific details from this article were "invaluable" to you? Genuine question. From my perspective the article has given a lot of internet strangers a very detailed mental image of how my...What specific details from this article were "invaluable" to you? Genuine question. From my perspective the article has given a lot of internet strangers a very detailed mental image of how my genitals likely look and function differently from theirs, some tips on where to start looking if they want to find pictures or more details and/or a network of trans men trying to help each other through the medical process, and the incorrect idea that the gender dysphoria that drives someone to go through the pain of phallo is some kind of philosophical stance on the platonic ideal of manhood, and/or a practical decision to be able to use urinals, etc. I see some of that as inaccurate and the true parts as private traumas of my life I'd rather not be aired for everyone to read about and then ask me about IRL. But maybe I'm misunderstanding how this is useful to the public, and/or to me?
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Comment on How Ben got his penis in ~lgbt
thetastelessturtle (edited )LinkI (trans man) cringed out of my skin reading this article. I don't want millions of people leering over the details of how my penis does or doesn't work, or the body horror I've had trying to live...I (trans man) cringed out of my skin reading this article. I don't want millions of people leering over the details of how my penis does or doesn't work, or the body horror I've had trying to live without one and getting one. I'm not a circus freak show with a "frankenweenie" or trying to make any kind of philosophical claims about "the malleability of sex and the essentialist claim that the penis makes the man." Good god.
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Comment on Walking away from Omelas - Lindsay Ellis says goodbye in ~life
thetastelessturtle (edited )Link ParentThis type of comment is the problem. This is vaguely implying that even though this criticism is baseless, there really is Very Valid Criticism of her out there. But all these other completely...- Exemplary
This type of comment is the problem.
It's worth mentioning that she was also criticized for a number of other things
This is vaguely implying that even though this criticism is baseless, there really is Very Valid Criticism of her out there. But all these other completely very real and deeply problematic things she's done are not actually presented here for the reader to analyze for themselves. The one actual thing specifically mentioned in the comment is a flat out lie [Edit: or, unsourced. It's occurred to me that maybe we're thinking of different incidents, and there's some other thing I'm not aware of.]
including writing fanfiction about a (fictional) enslaved person and slave owner being in a relationship - for which she didn't apologize, by the way.
She pondered in a tweet if anyone on the internet were terrible enough to have written ship fanfiction for the movie Harriet, like there's a lot of fanfiction out there for an unrelated popular ship that she considers abusive. But of course after this tweet has gone through the phone tag game of cancelling, it's being described as that she wrote fanfiction glorifying slavery. screenshot of the deleted tweet And she did apologize for this this tweet anyway, as the comparison does still make light of real historical brutalities. link to the timestamp of her video apology
This was not the accusation.
Are you sure? I'd be willing to bet a decent amount of money that there are dozens of tweets calling her a flat out racist, and worse. I'm not saying that everyone who criticized her was doing this. There were people who were dispassionately critically analyzing her behavior. But I also saw a whole lot of anime avatars performing high school bullying levels of harassment for clout.
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Comment on Architect resigns in protest over UCSB mega-dorm in ~design
thetastelessturtle Link ParentYeah, getting emotionally invested in every internet article is a waste of energy, it's better to read to learn. Like I mentioned already though, I think in practice your comments were arguing in...Yeah, getting emotionally invested in every internet article is a waste of energy, it's better to read to learn. Like I mentioned already though, I think in practice your comments were arguing in favor of a specific party from the article, and that's where the disagreement came from. I do also think it's interesting that the plan has no windows and that was a fixed requirement to the point of the architect resigning. If I had to guess I'd say that wanting a very high density building is the most likely reason, but it would be interesting to know more. I know nothing about this and haven't investigated either.
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Comment on Architect resigns in protest over UCSB mega-dorm in ~design
thetastelessturtle Link ParentI think the pro-building claim is weaker than claiming that the plan is strictly good. Their claim is that the building plan isn't known to be harmful enough to necessitate changing. I think that...- Exemplary
I think the pro-building claim is weaker than claiming that the plan is strictly good. Their claim is that the building plan isn't known to be harmful enough to necessitate changing. I think that position is aligned with "I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not" because "I don't know" means that the building can proceed as planned. You would need to be actively convinced that it was a bad plan to divert it. This would be different if the board was openly committed to only building beneficial plans, and wouldn't proceed unless the plan was validated to be good along several metrics. In that scenario a position of pure doubt really would be neutral. But it doesn't look like that's the case, so that's why I'm saying that it's taking their side. If the goodness of the plan is in question, the board is going to support building it because it's not proven to be harmful. Assuming I understand the situation correctly.
To be clear I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't have posted either. It's just that you seemed genuinely confused as to why other posters took your comment as an argument and engaged with it that way and asked why, and I have a possible explanation.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not” seems like it should be default for outsiders on basically any story that you never heard of before?
I think that's true assuming no data, but we do have a couple data points already:
- Almost every living space in existence today has windows, at presumably additional cost of building materials. This includes spaces not built primarily for human comfort, and at a budget.
- An expert in the field resigned over concerns on this decision, and wrote a professional opinion saying that it was a cruel idea. They referenced research vaguely but did not cite specifics.
- The people that disagree with the expert have not cited any research disagreeing with the professional opinion. They themselves are not experts in this field.
So my practice would be to bias slightly towards "windows are helpful for humans" because I have data pointing in that direction, and no data pointing against it. It is still possible that windows are constructed out of habit and not a net benefit for humans, but it seems unlikely given what I already know. I would be interested on studies but don't think I'd need one at this point to move past the neutral position. I don't think studies should be required for taking weakly held positions on every single internet article, though maybe it would be better if we decided to take the time and back up all our positions that way.
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Comment on Architect resigns in protest over UCSB mega-dorm in ~design
thetastelessturtle (edited )Link ParentI think the problem you hit in this specific instance is that there are more or less two binary sides on this, as it's been presented in the article, and one of the sides is roughly "don't jump to...Taking sides and arguing about it becomes "instant expert syndrome" and I try to caution against it, but I seem to be misunderstood. Is there some way that I can caution people about jumping to conclusions that won't get people angry about it?
I think the problem you hit in this specific instance is that there are more or less two binary sides on this, as it's been presented in the article, and one of the sides is roughly "don't jump to conclusions here." So even though you're coming from a place of good faith intellectual curiosity and trying to be neutral, in this specific instance that ends up effectively joining the argument and defending one of the specific sides in the disagreement. If one party is claiming that another party is taking a negative action, and the other party is denying it, asking people to doubt the accusation is siding with a specific party rather than being completely neutral.
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Comment on Looking for "gender questioning" content and personal experiences in ~lgbt
thetastelessturtle Link ParentI noticed in a couple of your posts you're being mindful about how it feels to embrace femininity as a signal towards transitioning. This is just my opinion, but IMO I don't think it really works...I noticed in a couple of your posts you're being mindful about how it feels to embrace femininity as a signal towards transitioning. This is just my opinion, but IMO I don't think it really works as a signal either way. I'd make a distinction between all of these:
A: Masculinity/femininity of self
B: Masculinity/femininity of external expression
C: Gender role society thrusts upon you
D: Biological sexMedically+socially transitioning affects C&D, and possibly B depending on how restrictive the roles in your society are re: gender expression. (Socially adopting a new name/pronouns without medically transitioning would affect C/maybe B. Medically transitioning and hiding it from everyone would only affect D.) But none of it affects A (minus any effects of switching your dominant sex hormone on your mind), and more importantly, it doesn't require any preconditions of A to work out or not work out for you. I have met a lot of very femme trans men and butch trans women, and of course many gender nonconforming cis people. I think in more transphobic countries like the UK this is more difficult, because the doctors will try to verify that A&B "matches" your transition direction before they give you access to hormones. But that's a lie that cis people are enforcing and not an actual inherent part of transitioning.
What I'm trying to say, basically, is that embracing femininity in your personality and your self expression could absolutely be the right move for you, but that doesn't really have bearing on whether or not you should transition IMO. That's more about C&D.
I also think going around in circles about whether or not what you're feeling is really dysphoria and how long you've had it can be unhelpful. I've heard stories from people who didn't realize that they've been blitzed out by it until after they started transitioning medically, and then suddenly it clicked that they felt like shit all the time and just didn't realize it before because it was inescapable, and now they're feeling better. Or just that they feel good now and they didn't before. For them it was more helpful to just keep following the path of doing what felt right to them rather than trying to analyze what kind and how much pain they were in for how long. I think that's the "euphoria"/"didn't know this was dysphoria" thing you mention, but not sure.
I realize typing this that this post is probably only going to make things more confusing since there isn't really any guideposts here. Sorry! Hope it all works out for you. I'm glad that you've been able to explore this safely with some loved ones so far.
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Comment on Looking for "gender questioning" content and personal experiences in ~lgbt
thetastelessturtle (edited )LinkHere's my personal story. I am a binary trans man and I do not know how to interpret my own emotions generally, so my own journey may or may not be relatable to you. I spent a long time dissecting...- Exemplary
Here's my personal story. I am a binary trans man and I do not know how to interpret my own emotions generally, so my own journey may or may not be relatable to you.
I spent a long time dissecting my gender identity from the perspective of what gender I "really" was and found it to be too subjective for me to get to the bottom of. What even is gender, and how do you know which one you are, or feel like? I couldn't answer these questions for myself in a satisfactory way without solving a bunch of higher order Ontology questions first. What is "really" a sandwich and does that include hot dogs? Is the color that I see and name "blue" the same color that you see when you look at the sky? If there were some clear neurology studies showing a gender identity bit in the brain that would have been my ideal. But we don't understand the brain well enough to read it for any kind of objective data like that.
However, I did make a lot of traction by noting observable facts about my behaviors and feelings in relationship to the sex of my body and gender in society, combined with the research on transitioning:
- I could not recognize myself in mirrors or recordings. I kept expecting to see my features, but more masculine.
- Being reminded of the sexually dimorphic characteristics of my body caused me distress.
- When people referred to me as a woman (in context, pronouns, female name) I felt like they were talking about somebody else, not me.
- The research on transitioning describes these symptoms as gender dysphoria, and transitioning is consistently shown to address it. There are no proven other solutions for this problem.
I tried ignoring this and dealing with it in less public ways, but as I aged my discomfort escalated. So I did end up medically transitioning. I am happy to say that this solved all of the above dissociation, and I've been embodied and feeling truly alive in all the years since. I wish that I had done it sooner so I could have gotten more years back out of the fog, but it is what it is.
I now also comfortably identify as a man because I feel like my male body is really mine rather than a meat contraption I am forced to puppet, and I feel like people are referring to me when they talk about me as a man. However I know this working definition may not work for anyone else.
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Comment on How do I get better at expressing vulnerability? in ~talk
thetastelessturtle LinkFeeling like I had to be strong for other people was a result of little traumas in my upbringing, which unfortunately compounded as I grew older. Trying to be a hero exposed me to a lot of abuse....Feeling like I had to be strong for other people was a result of little traumas in my upbringing, which unfortunately compounded as I grew older. Trying to be a hero exposed me to a lot of abuse. Those negative abuse experiences made me want to change. So I worked through my hero complex in therapy, and also deliberately taught myself a social script of asserting healthy boundaries from books so I wouldn't be (bad) vulnerable again. The idea I finally internalized that really made it click for me was: I'm not special. I'm just a person. I can't save anyone except myself. But that's okay, that's what being human is. I have limits, and I need to respect them to keep myself strong.
I still struggle with being vulnerable. I'm not over-vulnerable like I used to be, but now I don't trust people until they've really been a good friend for a long time. I'm working on it. I can see it's a reaction to some of the abuse, but I haven't figured out how to work through it yet. I have had some limited success with opening up in very small segments with people who are definitely safe, and then continuing again later if they respond well.
I have a therapist, but you know how that goes. It's not the same as talking to a peer, which is really where I'm stuck.
Reading this surprised me. This is the exact type of problem that a therapist should theoretically be able to help someone work through.
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Comment on If you listen/have listened to musicals before, what's your favorite musical and favorite songs within each musical? in ~music
thetastelessturtle Link ParentThanks for pointing that out, I've edited the post.Thanks for pointing that out, I've edited the post.
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Comment on If you listen/have listened to musicals before, what's your favorite musical and favorite songs within each musical? in ~music
thetastelessturtle (edited )LinkMusicals have a really broad range of styles, and have been around for a really long time. Once or twice a generation a new composer comes in and flips the previous stylings on their head. The...Musicals have a really broad range of styles, and have been around for a really long time. Once or twice a generation a new composer comes in and flips the previous stylings on their head. The "subgenres" of musicals are very different from each other, and people who really like musicals of a certain style don't necessarily like the others from different styles. If you're just getting into it I recommend listening to musicals from different composers and eras to get a feel for what you like.
Here are notable ones, in chronological order, listed along with others like them. I may be missing things. :)
- Oklahoma! (1943) is one of the more famous examples of the typical "classic" Broadway musicals, and at its time was one of the first musicals where the songs were integrated with the script to tell a coherent story. It's written by two people named Rodgers and Hammerstein, like most of the other "classic" musicals from this era. Musicals in this time period roughly follow the Hayes Code similar to films of the era, and have very strong 40s-50s sensibilities. Other notable examples of musicals like this include The Sound of Music (1959), The King and I (1944), and Cinderella (1957).
- Hair (1967) was one of the first major musicals to have an edgy tone, deal with serious themes, and use rock as its main genre influence. Other notable edgy rock musicals include Rent (1996), dealing with the HIV/AIDs crisis, Spring Awakening (2006) dealing with multiple teen issues, and Next to Normal (2008), dealing with mental health issues.
- Stephen Sondheim is a composer with a very distinct style who has single-handedly produced dozens of famous musicals over the past few decades. I'm breaking my own rule and listing him instead of any one of his pieces because it's impossible to pick out a single one that defines his style. His musicals all have very emotive music that isn't "catchy" but is extremely demonstrative of the character's emotions, but are also different from each other in tone and content. It's like a cross between traditional Broadway and jazz, I'm sure somebody smarter than me has a better way of describing it. Company (1970) is a drama about intimacy, Sweeney Todd (1979) is a dark comedy about a serial killer, Into the Woods (1987) is a fractured fairytale based on the Brothers Grimm, and West Side Story (1957) is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in the 50s in NYC. (Edit: Sondheim only wrote the lyrics, not the music, for West Side, and I originally confused Company with another musical.)
- The Phantom of the Opera (1986) is a dark drama that has a blend of semi-pop, semi-traditional Broadway music. It's famous for being one of the longest running musicals of all time. I'd consider it the straightforward modern evolution of the classic R&H musicals from the 40s-50s. Wicked (2003), a retelling of the Wizard of Oz, Les Misérables (1980), a drama about the French Revolution, and The Lion King (1994) are other famous musicals that fall into a similar category.
- Mamma Mia! (1999) is one of the more popular jukebox musicals, or a musical where the story has been written around a pre-existing set of popular songs. Mamma Mia! was based on ABBA's music. Other examples of this include Moulin Rogue! (2001) which used songs from various pop artists, Jagged Little Pill (2018) which used songs from Alannis Morissette, and Jersey Boys (2005) which used songs from The Four Seasons.
- Legally Blonde (2007) is a comedy musical that adapted an already well known non-musical film. It has a mix of pop and classic Broadway sounds. Other things like this include Mean Girls (2017), Beetlejuice (2018), and SpongeBob (2016).
- Hamilton (2015) was the first major popular musical to use rap as its main genre. It's lyrically and musically brilliant, there is nothing else like it.
- Hadestown (2019) is the first major popular musical I'm aware of that uses folk as its main genre influence.
I did check out the song you linked but couldn't really place it confidently among the stuff here. It sounded a little similar to Wicked. Wicked also has a fantastical setting and touches on some similar themes to Undertale the game, so you may have some luck starting with that one.
Double edit: after all that I didn't actually say what my favorites are. Hamilton (songs: My Shot, Satisfied) and Into the Woods (songs: Last Midnight, Giants in the Sky).
My negative response is specifically to the article + the broader political landscape in which it is being published for mass consumption + my own history, not to the act of sharing it on this specific forum. I apologize if my comment sounded like a rebuke or hostile to any specific user here, that wasn't my intention.