Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Got a lift home from trans gym and had a nice chat with my pal on the way. I was singing all my hits; topics covered include:

• ignore the EHRC guidance if you're feeling wobbly
• how to manage a hyperfixation on All This
• the importance of trans joy
• spite is a perfectly valid motivator

They had two bits of trans joy to share: someone they know came out this week as gender diverse, and when they were getting a haircut an old lady was getting her hair dyed rainbow colors in solidarity with her grandson who has his date for top surgery.

I went to pick up my bike today - it was ready to collect after its tune-up - and as soon as I got outside I was struck by how good the air smelled!

I love this time of year.

Also: whoa I didn't know brakes could be that good on my bike! Turns out my brake pads really did need replacing (and cables possibly too). And shifting gears happens so quickly and easily now!Both of these things made my ride home confusing, because my reflexes are all wrong now, but I look forward to getting used to this.

I'm wondering where I can find the UK transmasc organizing. (It is probably happening on reddit or bluesky or something that I don't have an account on, I know, sigh.)

Trans mascs/men's specific oppression under the supreme court ruling should be highlighted for itself, not in relation to trans women/fems' oppression, like as an abstract "beards in ladies loos" threat/stunt. (I'm sympathetic to the desire to "gotcha" the incoherent bigotry, but there are transmascs (yes even ones growing facial hair) who are already using the ladies' room because that's the way their safety calculations end up. Also I don't love the idea that beards or any other symbol of masculinity is inherently antithetical to, or exclusive of, femininity.)

Not only do TERFs talk about their "sisters" and "daughters" being swayed into "mutilating their bodies by gender ideology," books discussing this have been international bestsellers. Transphobic writers like Jesse Singal have made a career from anti-transmasculinity as well as transmisogyny.

One of the ways the UKSC ruling seems incoherent (from what I understand, I haven't read it all) is that while it says trans women should be excluded from women's spaces, it also says trans men should be excluded from women's spaces because of the "masculinising" effects of the testosterone we are all presumed to take. (This isn't surprising at least -- the TERFery that informed the decision takes a zero tolerance approach to testosterone -- but it never gets less baffling.)

This leaves trans men/mascs in a very weird position.

For example, can transmascs be removed from women's refuges if they take testosterone because it might "trigger" "survivors" (a status that of course no transmasc person could have, in this worldview)...? And of course I agree that a women's refuge isn't a great place for a transmasc person! But neither can we be left to just fend for ourselves around domestic violence.

A friend joked that if we can't be held in either male or female prison populations does this mean we can't be jailed, but their partner pointed out that transmasc people would likely just be held in solitary confinement.

Anyway. It occurred to me that most of the trans community I have -- certainly the activisty part -- is transfem, so before and after yesterday's protest I made some efforts to find both more trans advocacy and more transmasc community.

I'm in more WhatsApp groups and Discord servers now (sigh...especially because discord has found a new way to be inaccessible for me today! I literally can't scroll downwards!q), but I have plans to join some in-person gatherings this week too.

Something about this description of the upcoming weekend just made me laugh:

This weekend already has a fair amount going on, Nazis will be celebrating Hitler's birthday, stoners will be smoking weed, Christians will be at church and also the trains through Stockport are all down.

The train thing is as relevant to organizing a protest as all the others (I wouldn't want to omit that a Jewish holiday is going on too!), but it's just such a wild combination of things.

I had an intimidating amount of stressful work to do, that had to be done today.

And I did it.

And I also tried to explain to one of the white ladies who works in EDI that language like "female-identifying" is only used by well-meaning but out-of-date cis people and TERFs, and so it's really important for the former group to distinguish themselves from the latter. Among other things.

And then I went to circuits even though I was too tired to even want to change in to my gym clothes. I kept stopping whatever I was supposed to be doing because I was yawning too hard for, like, my muscles to be able to do anything else at the same time. But I got through it! It felt so good, after last week was such a slog.

We finally managed to watch the first episode of The Residence tonight.

Weird to be watching TV again, it's been a while (I think Man on the Inside was the last show for me?).

I enjoyed it, but one episode tonight was enough -- maybe just because we started at a time that meant the first episode finished after 9pm, which I feel like is my cutoff point for functionality, maybe because in combining The West Wing and a Benoit Blanc movie, it went with the speed of dialogue from Aaron Sorkin and the jump cuts from Rian Johnson. I felt exhausted by the amount of information and potential clues that had been poured in to my head by the end of one episode, and I'm sure I missed others (and this was with the audio description).

Also it feels weird to see Al Franken doing a reprise of his badass Senator persona.

I did enjoy it. Maybe I'm just tired.

I had another incredibly stressful day at work (don't even want to get in to it; the sooner I forget it the better) but after work D and I joined a "celebration ride" of a newly completed bit of bike infrastructure that now meant a reasonable path from the city centre to one area posh enough to have protected bike lanes was now connected up and the whole route could be cycled in Infrastructure physically separate from cars.

The route was one side of a triangle for us, with all the sides being 4ish miles, so the eventual trip was like 11 or 11.5 or something, I've forgotten already because I'm tired. 8 or 9 miles is more typical for D and I, who are very occasional cyclists not least because I have a number of accessibility criteria that have to be met, like it has to be not raining and not dark (as well as I have to not be on my own and ideally yes it's protected from motor vehicles), which basically mean I haven't been on my bike since probably before the clocks went back last fall. It's definitely a British Summer Time activity for me.

I ran out of energy just before we got home, hobbled directly to the shower without sitting down because I knew I'd never stand up if I did, and felt extremely accomplished for being clean, in my pajamas, and eating the pizza that awaited my arrival home this evening.

It was a fun thing to do (I did have a lot of opinions about how terrible some of the brand new infrastructure was for pedestrians -- I felt safer on my bike than I would have walking on some of those sidewalks much less trying to get on or off a bus at some of those stops, good lord -- but I tried not to let work take over my brain any more than it already does.

We ran into some people we vaguely know (someone I met at work, some people D knows from local online groups), we had some nice beer and good chats with someone we ran in to, after the second line of the triangle had been completed. It was sunny, and 68°F when I left the house so I wore shorts, that was great.

My quads are so sore (having only just recovered from a brutal circuits class on Monday, after I spent a long day traveling so I was already really sore ans exhausted), but I'm so happy. Happy I did it but happy it's done.

D has booked both our bikes in for a tune-up on Saturday afternoon, so I intend to move as little as possible tomorrow before lift club Saturday morning and riding our bikes to and from the place later. It's nowhere near as far, maybe a mile and a half each way, but I'm not used to this (yet!).

I had to go to London for work today, and back.

The experiences of the two journeys could hardly have been more different.

( This is the good half. )

She got me to my train, and left me with the gift of all my train tickets and the ability to have everything charged by the time I got off the train.

I've written so much, and it's so late and I'm so tired, I think I'll have to save the stories of my return journey for tomorrow.

All of a sudden this evening I'm not going to yoga, I'm going to see Skunk Anansie, a band I know nothing about beyond how cool Skin is.

Three people who should be going instead of me are all too ill, so I'm here having an immune system that works but also I spent the 90s listening to John Coltrane and Muddy Waters and shit, I don't know anything cool. I'm just going because D said "we can snuggle!"

He did deliver on that promise! Lots of snuggles, even though it was way too warm in that venue (even if there wasn't a deadly and disabling airborne pandemic, places should have better ventilation!).

I recognized exactly one song, and I had to keep my eyes closed almost the whole gig because the lights were like perfectly designed to make my nystagmus flare up, but I still had a very fun time!

What a funny introduction to a classic 90s band.

I went on a work trip today in a polo shirt and chinos, I really have started to dress like my dad.

But it's funny: this wasn't my dad's work clothes (which was sweaty t-shirts and dirty jeans), this is his weekend/leisure clothes. This was my dad's "having a nice time" clothes: not work and not chores. More like "grilling some hamburgers" or "going to Bakers Square and then the mall."

No wonder I associate this kind of clothes with good things.

Also I just was really feeling myself when I caught a glimpse of my reflection before I left the house this morning.

I'm still fat af, make no mistake. But I feel so much better in my clothes lately; I think the fat/muscle redistribution must still be happening (I keep forgetting how relatively little time I've been able to access testosterone, not even two years yet).