Somehow, this week was even less happening than last week. I don’t think I even so much as left my house, as I was waiting for an offer from the company I interviewed with. Cooped up in my home with nothing but games and videos, I’ll go a bit into that, along with a book I finished reading this week.
Have another Undertale song as you read. It’s a good one.
Nevada
My friend recommended me this book after I’d read Detransition Baby. Spoilers ahead!
It’s got two protagonists: Maria, a trans woman who deals with her life problems by driving to Nevada, where she meets James, a guy figuring out his own gender. You probably can guess which character I relate to more.
The book goes off on tangents into both characters’ backstories, letting those play out as they go through their daily lives. I suppose that’s the interesting part about this book and Detransition Baby: these stories do not move as fast as their non-queer counterparts but are still rich with characterisation.
That may be off-putting for some readers, especially with the ending where - spoilers - James doesn’t transition and just goes back home, and Maria disappears into a casino. On the surface this might defy all the expectations we have of narrative: where is the resolution? How did our characters change? But think about it in real life: does every encounter, every conflict in your life end with a neatly wrapped conclusion? I wouldn’t think so. Combine that with the author’s note that “this book isn’t a guide for anyone’s life”, and I think that really makes sense.
I’d recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about trans experiences: this is kind of the OG trans book, after all. It’s also a relatively short read: give yourself an afternoon with Maria and James, and you’ll all leave having known a bit more about each other.
Fixing Trans Fashion
I’ve been watching ICKY on YouTube for a while. She’s a trans woman who gives a lot of useful advice and she’s also F1NN5TER’s girlfriend. Naturally, her video about trans fashion showed up on my feed, and I learned a useful thing or two from it!
You can already see the difference in the thumbnail. The left side is a “baby trans” outfit, where many transfemmes (me included!) start off: overly feminine, to the point of not being age appropriate. Piece by piece, she transforms it into a more “everyday” female look: from removing stockings, to swapping the shirt for one that doesn’t emphasise her broad shoulders, I start to understand why she’s a model too.
More importantly, though, she loves the baby trans phase, and never says “this is what you MUST wear if not you’re not gonna pass!!” That’s a sense of empathy we don’t see often. Also, I’m glad she included the skirt as the centerpiece of the outfit: that is the only femme thing Charlotte can safely keep nowadays.
As for whether Charlotte is following these recommendations… well, I ditched stockings a long time ago (thank you Isabelle for that reality check). I wear ankle socks, or this really cute pair of tiger socks from uni. Unfortunately, that means I also need to shave my legs whenever my hair grows back in. The only tops I own are T-shirts, which probably don’t emphasise my shoulders? However, my skirt doesn’t really flare out… maybe it’s time I bought a new one.
Really looking forward to watching more Icky content. Would recommend to any trans girls who are just starting their journey.
LGBTQ+ in Russia
I started watching Natasha’s Adventures when the war in Ukraine started. When her channel popped up on my feed, I was curious about how Russians were living and their opinions on the war. Since then, she’s moved to Georgia, and hasn’t stopped the videos.
My initial reaction to this video was as the thumbnail stated. Russia is known for being one of the most anti-LGBT countries: could there really be a queer movement, queer people who exist with such strict laws against their existence?
There is no short answer. It’s always “not really…” or “yes, but…”, even where I live. And Natasha doesn’t attempt to make this a super well researched video, as she admits to in the first 3 minutes.
She raises examples from the 2010s, like celebrities being secretly queer, which brings to mind groups like Pussy Riot. I don’t think she’s trying to romanticise that era (neither am I), but I suppose laws on LGBTQ+ were less well-defined back then, allowing queer people to exist in their own unique ways so long as they weren’t too loud.
Compare that with today’s leaders trying to restrict trans healthcare based on shaky science, ban trans people from bathrooms of their gender, or removing protections for LGBTQ+ people… the world, and specifically the Internet, has become a far more unhinged place where the loudest voices prevail over truth.
Political stuff aside, she recalls her experiences with family. There are more parallels between my family and hers than I care to admit, though her situation is definitely a whole lot worse. At least my mom doesn’t want to acknowledge Charlotte anymore. Her mom kept claiming she was infected by woke Western degeneracy, even after she fled Russia.
She considers herself lucky that she’s not religious and doesn’t feel guilt about being queer, and there’s a line I want to quote from that: “Why [do] I need such a God who wants me to suffer for who I am, who wants me to burn in hell?” That is precisely why I’m not religious either.
Still, there’s some deprogramming she needed to do: from being angry at Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision win, to thinking she would definitely need a male partner to have a child, I can see there’s lots of assumptions she had to debunk for herself. This is the level of introspection that got her out of Russia, and I’m glad she’s finally got the capacity to live her own life as a lesbian woman. (Yes, she came out!)
And that’s it for now
NEETing at home isn’t the best lifestyle, I know. Charlotte’s actually going for a party later in the evening, so maybe I’ll post about that next!
Also, for my batchmates out there reading this, happy graduation. Mine is coming soon.
tata for now,
Charlotte