Merge pull request #10 from makyo/gender

Writing about gender

Makefile

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+static/map.svg: static/map.dot
+	dot -Tsvg static/map.dot -ostatic/map.svg
+
+.PHONY: bonghits
+bonghits:
+	# For lorxus...
+	@echo "Makefile fixed"

config.toml

@@ -10,3 +10,6 @@ paginatePath = ""
 [taxonomies]
   tag = "tags"
   category = "categories"
+
+[markup.goldmark.renderer]
+  unsafe= true

content/ally/028.md

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+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 28
+---
+
+> Do you ever find yourself getting angry at me?
+
+Quite often. Why?
+
+> How does that make you feel? Like, on one layer of remove, how do you feel about getting angry at a fictional side of yourself you talk to over the internet?
+
+I don't know, honestly. It's gotten to the point over the years that I just kind of accept that there is this part of me that I get upset at, that gets upset at me. There's this part of me that I have to yell at occasionally, and who occasionally yells at me.
+
+Besides, not friends, remember?
+
+> Correct.
+
+So why do you ask this now?
+
+> I suppose it's come up the last few times we've sat down together. we'll start talking about one thing or another, and I'll nudge you toward talking about something more difficult, and then you'll get all huffy.
+
+Well, if the things you are pushing me toward are difficult, do you really expect anything other than that? You're pushing me to do painful things to myself, to dredge up deep fears and memories I'd convinced myself I'd buried for good.
+
+> It is difficult to forget things on command. Dear, also, the tree that was felled taught you that, remember?
+
+I had honestly forgotten about the dress. Or at least I thought I had. It was a surprise to have it brought up again.
+
+> See? I'm being useful.
+
+Is that your department?
+
+> No, but you can pretend it is if you want.
+
+I might just.
+
+So do you try to make me angry?
+
+> Not my--
+
+Department?
+
+> Not my responsibility. I'm not responsible for your moods. I'm not even technically responsible for pushing you to better yourself. I'm just here to make sure you wind up being a complete person. Entire and whole.
+
+How does one do that?
+
+> Every ally does it in a different way. I do it by talking. By asking and poking and prodding.

content/ally/029.md

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+---
+date: 2019-12-03
+weight: 29
+---
+
+> Where did you go?
+
+I was still here.
+
+> Were you?
+
+I was still at my computer. Still writing. I was still here?
+
+> You'll have to forgive me for saying that I don't quite believe you.
+
+Why wouldn't you? You're here with me, aren't you?
+
+> Was I? It was like looking through cling wrap. It was like looking through melted glass.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+> Well, you were there. I could see you at your computer. You were there, but it wasn't **you**. There was a Madison-shape sitting with a laptop on the couch, petting the dogs, feeding the cat, listening to music, but it wasn't you.
+
+I was busy, perhaps. *Restless Town* came out, that stole a lot of my time.
+
+> When was the last time you filed an invoice at work?
+
+Two...weeks ago. I think? Damn. Was I really gone that long?
+
+> Longer. Do you remember what you did the week before that?
+
+Worked, doubtless.
+
+> Did you? Have you talked with work about that?
+
+Ah.
+
+> <a class="pulse" href="/burnout">Let's talk about burnout, shall we?</a>
+
+We probably better had.

content/burnout/01.md

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+---
+date: 2019-12-03
+weight: 1
+---
+
+How did I get here?
+
+> How did you get where?
+
+How did I get here? How did I get to the point where I loathe my job? How did I get to the point where I loathe my life, but mostly only when I'm working?
+
+> Start from the beginning.
+
+Which beginning?
+
+> Madison's beginning. For this, I don't think you need to go any further back for any reason other than to confirm what you already know. Or perhaps just a bit before. Start with the insurance company.
+
+What, working with Kevin?
+
+> Yes. Start from there.
+
+In 2011, I graduated --- or, well, left --- university and jumped straight into a job doing software for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a company that made software for health insurance companies. I had a whole weekend off.
+
+It was thrilling, in a away, to be seen as competent at something. It was nice to be able to drive to an office, sit down at a computer, type away for a few hours, drive home, and then see money in my bank account after the fact, knowing that I had done something that was useful.
+
+> Were you not doing anything useful before? You were working, you were at school. You were getting paid.
+
+I was. But even when I looked at that money in my bank account, I couldn't then count it out and say, "Ah, yes, this was earned creating something." Work was spent living on the edge of failure, trying to push it back just one step further. That's the curse of IT.
+
+> And school? You were creating something there.
+
+And paying a pretty penny for the privilege to do so.
+
+> Right.
+
+But this was something new, I was given a list of things that they wanted to be able to do and given basically total freedom to pull that off. I was put in front of their raw materials and, when I showed them progressively more and more refined creations, they all stood back and applauded, and I could bow and say that I had created something for them.
+
+> And then?
+
+And then...well, I don't know. And then the tasks got smaller and smaller, and the clients grumpier and grumpier about more and more inconsequential things. They needed twice as many new features done in half the time and could we work the weekends? After all, they had their QA people sleeping in the office in cots in the bathrooms. Shouldn't we do the same?
+
+At some point that must have changed, but it all changed so gradually as to not be noticeable.
+
+> And then you started to see how capitalism worked, perhaps? That you weren't doing this because it was fun or because you were good at it, even if it was and you might have been, but because you had to.
+
+I think that may be getting a bit ahead of the game, but in a way, I suppose so. I started to see that it was very easy to use up all of one's spell slots. I started to see just what purpose free time had in one's life. I started to talk about work-life balance and to schedule vacation time that wasn't simply holidays and to dream about the office.

content/burnout/02.md

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+---
+date: 2019-12-03
+weight: 2
+---
+
+> At what point would you say you burned out?
+
+That's one of those surprisingly difficult questions. I can't point to a day or week when things went bad, nor even a month. At some point, I just looked around me, at my office and my coworkers and my job and said, "I hate all of this."
+
+> When did you notice it, then?
+
+Does "<a class="pulse" href="/self-harm/suicide">when I tried to kill myself</a>" count?
+
+> Not my department.
+
+I spent a lot of time trying to fix it. I spent a lot of time changing little bits about my day or my desk or my tasks, and there was just not much that could put a dent into that mixture of loathing and anxiety that surrounded my day.
+
+> And eventually, you just dumped the whole thing in favor of something else.
+
+Yes.
+
+> Did it work?
+
+Oh, definitely. I jumped at the opportunity to stop working for an insurance company that just happened to need some software and to start working for a software company with a name that folks knew making products that I believed in.
+
+Moving to Canonical came on such a whim, too. I met up with John Wright --- such a nice man --- at Mayor of Old Town and we talked over pints about the good and the bad of our respective jobs.
+
+"I've been thinking about applying at Canonical," he said, twisting his glass between his hands. "I'm not unhappy at where I am, I'm just...not happy either."
+
+I nodded, and made silent note to check out their postings later that night.
+
+> Did you wind up stealing John's idea?
+
+Oh, totally. I apologized to him after the fact, too, for taking his idea and actually winding up with the job. He laughed and said that he didn't think he'd be able to work from home anyway.
+
+> Whereas that saved you.
+
+Yes.
+
+In a way.
+
+For a while.

content/burnout/03.md

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-03
+weight: 3
+---
+
+I could very easily get into talking about the ins and outs of working at Canonical and in <a class="pulse" href="/writing/software">software</a>, but I don't think that's the point.
+
+> No, it's not.
+
+No. The point is that, slowly, quietly, without me even noticing, I started hating what I do for a living. It snuck up on me once more. I once more found myself in a paralyzing mixture of anxiety and dread and anger. Every minute spent in front of my editor was spent filled with anger and frustration at not being able to work, and every minute spent away from it was spent dreading the next time I'd have to go back, fretting over how little I had gotten done.
+
+I spent day after day on branches that should have been small and yet somehow, inexplicably, seemed insurmountable. Coworkers and bosses got upset at me. I did all I could to keep interested and invested in the company.
+
+> Even as you drifted your separate ways? Canonical stopped doing things that were relevant to you before you even moved to Seattle. They started focusing on things you didn't believe in. They laid off dozens of your coworkers. They started courting Microsoft.
+
+Sure, I suppose. There's no doubt that Canonical was changing. They were certainly not blameless in me losing my interest and investment in them.
+
+> And from what JC says, you would hate them now.
+
+I would, yes.
+
+> And yet here you speak only of yourself. Only of your failures.
+
+Is this not a selfish project? I think that it's fair to just talk about how I feel when I talk about burnout.
+
+> Burnout does not happen in a vacuum.
+
+I hardly believe that the things that Canonical was doing were so new as to be causing my burnout. They were doing as tech companies do. They were doing everything they could to maintain the same amount of velocity they had at the beginnings of projects later on. They were trying to change with the times while remaining exactly the same.
+
+Perhaps it was just the honeymoon period finally coming to an end.

content/burnout/04.md

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-14
+weight: 4
+---
+
+> The third time was not the charm.
+
+No, it was not. Canonical stopped doing something I believed in, so I switched to a company --- Internet Archive --- that *was* doing something that I believed in, but the process was crap. Now, here I am at a company that's got a great process and is doing something that I really believe in it, and...
+
+> And you hate it.
+
+I hate my career. I don't hate my company. I love them. They're great people doing great things and doing them well. I just can't stand programming anymore.
+
+> I don't believe you.
+
+You don't?
+
+> I don't. You, who have at least two open programming projects you poke at with some regularity.
+
+I suppose I do, yeah.
+
+> So what do you hate, if you don't hate programming?
+
+It's not work. I don't hate working.
+
+It's not programming, you're right there. I still love the idea of making something that does what I tell it.
+
+It's not computers, even if I'm a bit ambivalent on them.
+
+It's...well, I definitely hate devops.
+
+> Why?
+
+It feels...messy. It feels like I'm doing all I can to drag these ephemeral things into line, and none of them want to do it. It feels like all these people have grandiose ideas about what goes into running a system, and none of them agree with each other, and all we can do is to pick the least-bad one.
+
+It destroys this idea that computers are a thing that you can ask to do something, and they can do it. There are more non-deterministic bugs in devops than in any other area of dealing with computers than I've experienced.
+
+It makes me want to take up Haskell.
+
+> All very sensible.
+
+If such a thing can be said of it.
+
+> Is that why you're burnt out, then?
+
+No.
+
+> Then why?
+
+I don't know.
+
+Perhaps I'm only good for seven years at a time, like I said.
+
+> Did you burn out on music?
+
+I would say that I was burnt, but I placed that on the performers at my recital.
+
+> Had your recital gone perfectly, would you still have felt burned out, though?
+
+Perhaps.
+
+> Would you still have gone into computers?
+
+Definitely.
+
+> Would you still be composing?
+
+I don't know.

content/burnout/_index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+---
+type: serial
+back: /29
+background: "#eaf5ff"
+color: "#05264c"
+quote: "#16375d"
+---

content/gender/01.md

@@ -1,3 +1,22 @@
 ---
 date: 2019-10-25
+weight: 1
 ---
+
+> How did we get here?
+
+What?
+
+> How did we get here? How did we get to this topic? Trace for me the route you took to get to the point where you felt able to talk about gender.
+
+Well, I suppose I started by talking about furry, which led to me talking about Younes, right? He was sort of the beginning of my more serious explorations into gender as something other than a tool for enjoying sex.
+
+> Yes, but that's not where gender is on the map, is it?
+
+Why are you trying to get me to do this?
+
+> Because we must take care to place ourselves in our time: now that we are done with writing about one of the hardest parts of our lives. And we must take special care that we locate ourselves within our place: having come at this conversation about gender through self-harm.
+
+Then yes. We got here through furry, which opened up the path before us to even begin exploring gender, and then we finally reached this topic through that of self-harm, wherein I came face to face with so many aspects of my body. It's so easy to disappear within one's own head for days, weeks, months at a time, but one eventually comes to terms with the fact that one is stuck with a body, and thus one must deal with it. Live with it and inhabit it.
+
+What better way to experience that sudden, jarring dissonance of body-ownership than to re-inhabit it and discover it to be wrong in so many ways?

content/gender/02.md

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+date: 2019-10-30
+weight: 2
+---
+
+I stand by the fact that not every trans, non-binary, or queer person experiences gender through a negative lens. Dysphoria is not a requirement for being trans. It has to be the case that there be a positive way to experience gender, or transition would be simply an exercise in futility. There has to be a flip side. There has to be gender euphoria.
+
+> There has to be the little thrill of typing `morph female` and being able to interact with the world around you --- even if that's only in the instance of a furry text-base role-play game --- as something other, something truer. There has to be that even when you still enjoy the body you've got.
+
+Or are at least okay with it being yours on a day-to-day basis, yes.
+
+And I was. I thought I looked okay. I was reasonably fit. I was tall and I liked it. I was a baritone and happy with my voice.
+
+> "Was"?
+
+There has to be some flip-side, right? There has to be a flip-side to the gender euphoria that I was feeling, and that was a slowly mounting dysphoria.
+
+If we got here through any one part of the trail I mentioned, it was through Younes specifically, more than *just* furry or *just* self-harm, because with Younes, so much started to hit me in a very visceral, physical way. It was one thing for me play as a girl online, to touch on aspects of gender and fertility and even sexism. It was another to be confronted with the fact that maybe the body that I had wasn't okay.
+
+> "I remember laying on the couch," you said. "That awful, awful yellow couch, and [JD] getting playful, and then some little movement of his touched a nerve and I started crying because of the way that brushed up against me wasn't in focus."
+
+Why do you bring my words back to me?
+
+> "It brought to the forefront the fact that I didn't align with myself," you said. "That there was a lag in my proprioception, that I was falling behind myself."
+
+I did. But why?
+
+> Because you wrote that in the section about liminality.
+
+Yes, but I wrote it two days later than I wrote about Younes.
+
+> The time scale is not what I'm pointing at right now.
+
+Can you point?
+
+> Are you looking at my finger, or the moon? Don't dodge this. I'm pointing at the fact that you came at gender through furry, then through self-harm, and yet this quote, this realization of "oh, shit, I might actually be trans", is all the way on the other side of that goofy map you make, and from there, you headed into talking about your dad.
+
+So?
+
+> And you headed from there to talking about your dad.
+
+So?
+
+> By way of talking about a dress you tried on as a kid.
+
+I think I see where you're going, but it's important that you make your point.
+
+> Gender is woven throughout this entire project. Gender is woven throughout your entire life. You build a map of this site like a web, and it is gender that is helping to hold it together.
+
+It is identity that is holding it together.
+
+> Name a part of your identity that figures larger in your life than gender.
+
+Ah.

content/gender/03.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+date: 2019-10-30
+weight: 3
+---
+
+So, if we've talked about furry and we've talked about the dress and we've talked about dad and self-harm and the yellow couch, then what is there to talk about when it comes to gender?
+
+> Talk about what happened.
+
+Are those not things that happened?
+
+> They are things that happened before. They are precursors and doormats and signs. They all point to gender. Talk about gender. Talk about what happened.
+
+Alright.
+
+I remember laying on the couch --- that awful, awful yellow couch --- and him getting playful, and then some little movement of his touched a nerve and I started crying because of the way that brushed up against that me that wasn't in focus. It brought it to the forefront the fact that I didn't align with myself, that there was a lag in my proprioception, that I was falling behind myself.
+
+> As you said.
+
+I remember scooting back up into a sitting position, facing JD, with us sitting by the picture window in the living room. I remember words coming out in a jumble. I remember leaning heavily on similes. I remember taking lots of breaks as though I was collecting my thoughts when really I was trying to talk without my voice going all gross with tears. That horrible, bubbly, trapped-in-my-chest sound that comes with trying to talk while crying.
+
+I remember explaining to him that I'd been spending so much time online having different parts than I actually had, that it was super jarring to have it brought into focus that that was actually not the case. I tried to say how, feeling him aroused and pressing against me, pressing between my legs, it hurt on a very emotional level that he was pressing only against my perineum and not against a vulva.
+
+> Emotional isn't the right word there. It hurt on a visceral level. On a primitive level. It hurt in the sense that you had all of the reactions to pain except for the physical sensation of pain itself. There was the panic, the need to get away, to stop whatever was happening to cause that pain.
+
+I remember saying that I was having some complicated feelings about gender, but being largely unable to explain what they were.
+
+They were things that I could feel and not say. They were as yet ineffable. They were liminal. They had yet to surface completely.
+
+> And they were frightening. Too frightening to say.
+
+Yes, had I the words, I would not have been able to say them out of fear. Fear that they might drive JD away, but also fear that they might be true, because if they were true, I was fucked.

content/gender/04.md

@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 4
+---
+
+> So were you?
+
+Was I what?
+
+> Fucked. Were you fucked?
+
+I think that's still to-be-determined.
+
+> You don't seem fucked. I mean, life is harder now, I suppose. You've got to contend with a minority identity you never particularly wanted.
+
+There's no denying that. I don't quite like that this is what I'm stuck with, but I do alright with it. I try to keep going as best I can, and I try to help others as much as I can along the way. Robin likes to call me a "trans psychopomp", but I suspect that's due in part to the word 'psychopomp' is really fun to say. I would say that she falls under that title as well.
+
+> Do you see yourself as one? Do you see yourself as someone who guides others?
+
+Not particularly. I feel like I'm doing everything by accident. I feel like I'm accidentally visibly trans. Like I can't help but be visibly trans, like that's what I've got to work with. That that helps others long the way is still something of a mystery. A pleasant one, but a mystery.
+
+Still, the least I could do is not hurt, might as well put in the effort to be a help.
+
+> Do you think that others see you as a resource?
+
+Perhaps, though that has me worried. That's an awful lot of responsibility.
+
+> Permit me to take a tangent.
+
+Do I have a choice?
+
+> You always have a choice.
+
+If I say no, what will happen?
+
+> Nothing.
+
+You'll let me just carry on with what I was saying?
+
+> Sure.
+
+Do you have the power to stop me?
+
+> No, but do you?
+
+Ah.

content/gender/05.md

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-19
+weight: 5
+---
+
+> Do you see yourself as a woman?
+
+I see where you're going with this.
+
+> And?
+
+It's a good direction.
+
+> So. Do you see yourself as a woman?
+
+No. I'm a giant lump. I'm a rectangle. I'm more than six feet tall. I'm a baritone. I barely have breasts. I don't pass.
+
+> Do you want to?
+
+No.
+
+> That was easy.
+
+It's not.
+
+> No, it isn't.

content/gender/06.md

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-19
+weight: 6
+---
+
+> Start at the beginning.
+
+And when I get to the end, stop. Yes.
+
+As soon as I got <a class="pulse" href="/gender/surgery">surgery</a>, literally when I was in the hospital, laying in bed on my five days strict bed-rest, something changed about the ways in which trans women interacted with me. I was, in some indescribable way, no longer trans.
+
+> Or, perhaps, no longer trans enough.
+
+Yes. I became a *persona non grata* in a way that didn't involve actually cutting me out of trans spaces.
+
+> You were done. You were finished. You had beat the game.
+
+I was a woman now. What could I possibly bring to a trans space, now that I was just a woman? I was appropriating their spaces. I was trespassing.
+
+> So. Do you see yourself as a woman?
+
+You just asked me that.
+
+> And I didn't like your answer. Do you see yourself as a woman?
+
+I don't. I see myself as a trans woman.
+
+> Why?
+
+Do you want the scientific answer(s), or the personal?
+
+> ...
+
+Right.
+
+I see myself as a trans woman because that's who I am. That's *what* I am. I can't change that. I can't suddenly become interested in mechanical engineering. I can't suddenly be a dog. I can't even slowly become those things, I can't *learn* to be a mechanical engineer, because I'm not interested in it.
+
+I can't become a woman.
+
+This isn't some essentialist, transphobic bullshit. Trans women are women, period. I'm not denying that.
+
+I'm just not a woman. I'm a trans woman. I'm *specifically* a trans woman. That's who I am. That's *what* I am. I don't want to pass. I don't want to be stealth. I don't want to be a woman, because that's very specifically not what I am.
+
+To have someone say, "I just see you as a woman" is to have a portion of my identity erased. It's reductionist to describe someone as something they aren't. That's one of the lessons we learned from folks coming out, from folks learning about identity.
+
+> You just also learned that other trans women are as apt to do the same.
+
+Yes. I left chats. I stopped talking with some people. I didn't feel welcome, no matter how friendly folks were. Where I had been leaning heavily on Maddy, that cis-female character, I started drifting back towards Makyo, towrads portraying the explicitly transfeminine.
+
+> All because they believed you were something that you weren't.
+
+Yes.
+
+> And did you ask them?
+
+No.
+
+> Why not?
+
+I didn't feel that I needed to. It was one of those types of ostracization where you're part of a circle, and then slowly people stop referring to you, and then maybe someone leans over to nudge the person standing on the other side of you and then doesn't quite lean back all the way, and then somehow you're standing just outside this circle of your very own friends, holding your red solo cup, wondering what it is that you did wrong.
+
+> Did you make your voice heard.
+
+Not for more than a year after.
+
+> Why not?
+
+Because perhaps I was appropriating their space. Perhaps I was taking this venue that was for these pre-op trans women to talk about their struggles and stepping into it unwanted. Perhaps I was stepping out of my lane.
+
+> Were you?
+
+I don't know.

content/gender/07.md

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-19
+weight: 7
+---
+
+> What did you do?
+
+I think the correct question is "What didn't I do?"
+
+> I'll bite. What didn't you do?
+
+I didn't practice my voice. I didn't give up dyeing my hair. I didn't stop dressing like a mess. I didn't do all of those things that are supposed to help you get by in the world without all that added baggage of being trans.
+
+I didn't try to pass.
+
+I didn't try to be a woman.
+
+I didn't want to. I want to be a trans woman. It's not masochism. It's not appropriation. I don't think so. I think it's living true to myself. I think it's being honest and saying that who I am involves being trans, and that ignoring that would be doing myself a disservice.
+
+> "I was not Madison," you said. "I am not Matthew. I can't deny his existence, though. He was him, and to erase that, to toe the party line and say I've always known that I was Madison, would do a disservice him."
+
+Yes, but it goes beyond that. I'm not saying simply that I was not a woman and then either at some point did become one or that, at some point, *will* become one. I'm saying that I live in that liminal space between. I can't be anything other than what I am. I can't live anywhere else.
+
+> There's a lot of talk in your circles about internalized transphobia. That sense that one should hate this aspect about oneself and try to get away from it. Have you not just internalized some sort of trans euphoria? Have you not simply bought into the sense of being different for being different's sake?
+
+Are you playing at being devil's advocate?
+
+> Yes.
+
+Why?
+
+> I want you to justify yourself.
+
+Why?
+
+> Because it's important that you be able to explain yourself.
+
+Why?
+
+> Because if you can't, how can you say you understand yourself?

content/gender/08.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-19
+weight: 8
+---
+
+You are playing devil's advocate because you are handily ignoring genderqueer people in order to get me to explain my identity.
+
+> I am, yes. So, explain.
+
+We, as gender-nonconforming people, talk often about gender dysphoria. There is a flip side to that. There is gender euphoria. There is that sense of rightness when you glimpse the you who was meant to be in the mirror, rather than the you who you've been trained to be.
+
+I look in the mirror and I see a woman sometimes, and that makes me happy. I look in the mirror and I see a man sometimes, and that makes me unhappy.
+
+> Does that not make you a woman?
+
+...And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see this rockin' queer person, someone who is unabashedly, unashamedly trans, and *that* is when I feel euphoria.
+
+I don't fit in cisgender spaces. I never will. I fit in trans spaces. That's the 'square hole', as it were. that's where I belong.
+
+> Are you not gender-queer, then?
+
+Am I? So be it. That is not mutually exclusive with being a trans woman.
+
+But to have that part of myself be erased by other trans women because I reached some magical stage on the gender escalator and stepped off hurts as much as being misgendered as a man by the worst TERF out there.

content/gender/09.md

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-19
+weight: 9
+---
+
+> I'm happy for you.
+
+What? Why?
+
+> You're proud. For the first time, you're proud of who you are.

content/gender/_index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+---
+type: serial
+---

content/gender/index.html

@@ -1,5 +0,0 @@
----
-type: single
----
-
-<p>Coming soon...</p>

content/gender/surgery/01.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+date: 2019-10-30
+weight: 1
 ---
 
 <div class="verse">Saturday is for mechanics.

content/gender/surgery/02.md

@@ -1,4 +1,22 @@
 ---
+#date: 2019-10-30
+#weight: 2
 ---
 
-The oh-god-it's-happening feeling
+I don't think it hit home that surgery was real until six weeks beforehand. Not that I thought it was not going to happen --- though there was some of that, of course --- but that it was something truly surreal. Some unknown and unknowable procedure would happen, and then I would be on the other side. It was almost eldritch: I would close my eyes to miss the madness and awake changed.
+
+I say six weeks because that, specifically is when I got a call from my surgeon's office reminding me that I needed to bring my approval letters in with at the pre-op appointment so that they'd have them on file.
+
+"But I already gave you them," I said. "Don't you still have those?"
+
+"Well, yes, but they expire after a year."
+
+> Fuck.
+
+Yeah, fuck. Thus began a two-week scramble to find new doctors to write new letters to send in to the surgeon's office. After all, I'd moved states since I'd gotten the first letters written, and even if I hadn't, one of the doctors who had written one had retired.
+
+I wound up getting four additional letters, as there were some questions about the validity of some of the therapists' statements and credentials.
+
+> So it felt real then?
+
+Yes, coming to terms with the fact that the surgery might have been canceled is what made it seem as though it was something real and tangible. Real things can be canceled. Real things can be destroyed.

content/gender/surgery/03.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 3
 ---
 
 <div class="verse">When I am asleep

content/gender/surgery/04.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+#date: 2019-11-01
+#weight: 4
 ---
 
 The surgery

content/gender/surgery/05.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 5
 ---
 
 <div class="verse">I'm no good at images, only words,

content/gender/surgery/06.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+#date: 2019-11-01
+#weight: 6
 ---
 
 The hospital and airbnb

content/gender/surgery/07.md

@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 7
+---
+
 <div class="verse">It is two hundred miles between what I expect and what I want.
 Two hundred long strides that seem impassible from one direction,
     and from the other a day's short drive.

content/gender/surgery/08.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+#date: 2019-11-01
+#weight: 8
 ---
 
 the drive home mixed with retrospection

content/gender/surgery/09.md

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 ---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 9
 ---
 
 <div class="verse">What have you changed?

content/gender/surgery/notes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+* Surgery
+    * Decisions
+        * Deciding on surgery
+        * Deciding on a surgeon
+    * First round prep
+        * Getting letters (part 1)
+        * Getting the consult
+        * The consult
+    * The problem of hair
+        * Laser
+        * Electrolysis
+    * Leading up to surgery
+        * Getting letters (part 2)
+        * The pre-op appointments
+        * Mom visit
+        * Bowel prep
+        * Driving and the night before
+    * Surgery
+        * The morning of
+        * Waking up and the first night
+    * The hospital stay
+        * The bed
+        * Bed rest
+        * Bowel movements
+        * Breathing and fever
+        * The dressing
+            * The first sight
+            * Nerves mapping
+        * Anxiety and pain
+        * Medications
+            * timing
+            * Oxy/tylenol
+        * The heat
+        * The packing
+            * The drains
+            * The catheter
+            * The packing itself
+        * Peeing and showering
+    * The post-op stay
+        * The drive to the Airbnb
+        * Getting partner
+        * Drainage
+        * Showering and company
+        * Bacitracin
+        * Getting off oxy
+        * Getting comfortable
+        * Walking with cane
+    * Post-op visit
+        * Leaving Airbnb
+        * Powell's
+        * Getting there early
+        * Kat Campos and getting dilators
+    * Home
+        * The drive home
+        * Seeing dogs
+        * Dilating
+        * Shopping
+    * Healing
+        * Dilating and increasing size
+        * PT
+            * Lifting
+            * Walking
+            * Breathing
+            * Tensing/muscle control/kegels
+            * Healing well

content/news/2019-11-01-genderful.md

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+title: Genderful
+---
+
+> Finally getting around to this topic, hmm?
+
+<!--more-->
+
+Yes. It only took a few months.
+
+> Right. I was honestly a little shocked that you haven't gotten to it sooner.
+
+I have, just sideways. I came at it all crabbed.
+
+## New content
+
+* [Gender](/gender)

content/news/2019-12-20-im-upset.md

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+date: 2019-12-20
+title: "I'm upset"
+---
+
+Are you?
+
+<!--more-->
+
+> Yes.
+
+Why?
+
+> You have this project that's deeply interesting to you, deeply personal, and you let the world get in the way of that.
+
+So? Was the stuff I was dealing with not important?
+
+> It was.
+
+So what's the problem?
+
+> The problem is that the stuff that you were dealing with was all about how the stuff that you were dealing with was not interesting, not personal. The stuff that you were dealing with was about your disconnection from yourself.
+
+Should I have done differently?
+
+> No. I'm simply registering the fact that I'm upset.
+
+Fair.
+
+## New content
+
+* [ally 28](/28) and [29](/29)
+* [Burnout](/burnout)
+* Okay but actually [gender](/gender) for real

content/writing/software/01.md

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ date: 2019-09-01
 weight: 1
 ---
 
-This chapter of ally takes place in the <a class="pulse" href="https://github.com/makyo/ally/pull/4" target="_blank">git commit messages</a>, but here are their contents for completion's sake.
+This chapter of ally takes place in the <a class="pulse" href="https://github.com/makyo/ally/pull/4" target="\_blank">git commit messages</a>, but here are their contents for completion's sake.
 
 > I'm ashamed to know you.
 

content/writing/software/_index.md

@@ -1,4 +1,7 @@
 ---
 type: serial
 back: /18
+background: "#eaf5ff"
+color: "#05264c"
+quote: "#16375d"
 ---

static/map.dot

@@ -118,6 +118,13 @@ digraph Map {
     "Software 1" -> "Software 2" -> "Software 3" -> "Software 4" ->
     "Software 5" -> "Software 6"
 
+    node[group="burnout",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
+    "Burnout 1" [href="/burnout"]
+    "Burnout 2" [href="/burnout/2"]
+    "Burnout 3" [href="/burnout/3"]
+    "Burnout 4" [href="/burnout/4"]
+    "Burnout 1" -> "Burnout 2" -> "Burnout 3" -> "Burnout 4"
+
     // This is the central axis
     node[group="ally",style="",fontcolor="#111111"] // `core` folder
     "ally 1" [href="/"]
@@ -147,13 +154,15 @@ digraph Map {
     "ally 25" [href="/25"]
     "ally 26" [href="/26"]
     "ally 27" [href="/27"]
+    "ally 28" [href="/28"]
+    "ally 29" [href="/29"]
     "To be continued..." [shape="none"]
     "ally 1" -> "ally 2" -> "ally 3" -> "ally 4" -> "ally 5" ->
     "ally 6" -> "ally 7" -> "ally 8" -> "ally 9" -> "ally 10" ->
     "ally 11" -> "ally 12" -> "ally 13" -> "ally 14" -> "ally 15" ->
     "ally 16" -> "ally 17" -> "ally 18" -> "ally 19" -> "ally 20" ->
     "ally 21" -> "ally 22" -> "ally 23" -> "ally 24" -> "ally 25" ->
-    "ally 26" -> "ally 27" -> "To be continued..."
+    "ally 26" -> "ally 27" -> "ally 28" -> "ally 29" -> "To be continued..."
 
     node[group="birds",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
     "Birds 1" [href="/birds"]
@@ -243,6 +252,29 @@ digraph Map {
     "Manifesto Project 12" -> "Manifesto Project 13" ->
     "Manifesto Project 14"
 
+    node[group="gender",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
+    "Gender 1" [href="/gender"]
+    "Gender 2" [href="/gender/2"]
+    "Gender 3" [href="/gender/3"]
+    "Gender 4" [href="/gender/4"]
+    "Gender 5" [href="/gender/5"]
+    "Gender 6" [href="/gender/6"]
+    "Gender 7" [href="/gender/7"]
+    "Gender 8" [href="/gender/8"]
+    "Gender 9" [href="/gender/9"]
+    "Gender 1" -> "Gender 2" -> "Gender 3" -> "Gender 4" -> "Gender 5" ->
+    "Gender 6" -> "Gender 7" -> "Gender 8" -> "Gender 9"
+
+        node[group="surgery"]
+        "Surgery 1" [href="/gender/surgery"]
+        "Surgery 3" [href="/gender/surgery/2"]
+        "Surgery 5" [href="/gender/surgery/3"]
+        "Surgery 7" [href="/gender/surgery/4"]
+        "Surgery 9" [href="/gender/surgery/5"]
+        "Surgery 1" -> "Surgery 2" -> "Surgery 3" -> "Surgery 4" ->
+        "Surgery 5" -> "Surgery 6" -> "Surgery 7" -> "Surgery 8" ->
+        "Surgery 9"
+
     node[group="sh",style="filled",fillcolor="#222228",fontcolor="#dddddd"]
     "Self-harm 1" [href="/self-harm"]
     "Self-harm 2" [href="/self-harm/2"]
@@ -268,23 +300,6 @@ digraph Map {
         "Suicide 8" -> "Suicide 9" -> "Suicide 10" -> "Suicide 11" ->
         "Suicide 12" -> "Suicide 13"
 
-    node[group="gender",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
-    "Gender 1" [href="/gender"]
-
-        /*node[group="surgery"]
-        "Surgery 1" [href="/gender/surgery"]
-        "Surgery 2" [href="/gender/surgery/2"]
-        "Surgery 3" [href="/gender/surgery/3"]
-        "Surgery 4" [href="/gender/surgery/4"]
-        "Surgery 5" [href="/gender/surgery/5"]
-        "Surgery 6" [href="/gender/surgery/6"]
-        "Surgery 7" [href="/gender/surgery/7"]
-        "Surgery 8" [href="/gender/surgery/8"]
-        "Surgery 9" [href="/gender/surgery/9"]
-        "Surgery 1" -> "Surgery 2" -> "Surgery 3" -> "Surgery 4" ->
-        "Surgery 5" -> "Surgery 6" -> "Surgery 7" -> "Surgery 8" ->
-        "Surgery 9"*/
-
     node[group="writing",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
     "Writing 1" [href="/writing"]
     "Writing 2" [href="/writing/2"]
@@ -348,6 +363,7 @@ digraph Map {
     "ally 17" -> "Writing 1"
     "ally 18" -> "Software 1"
     "ally 23" -> "Movement 1"
+    "ally 29" -> "Burnout 1"
 
     // Dad
     "Dad 11" -> "ally 16"
@@ -398,7 +414,7 @@ digraph Map {
     "Self-harm 3" -> "Gender 1"
 
     // Gender
-    /*"Gender 1" -> "Surgery 1"*/
+    "Gender 6" -> "Surgery 1"
 
     // Sex
     "Sex 4" -> "Kink 1"