Some gender stuff

Makefile

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+static/map.svg: static/map.dot
+	dot -Tsvg static/map.dot -ostatic/map.svg
+
+.PHONY: bonghits
+bonghits:
+	# For lorxus...
+	@echo "Makefile fixed"

content/aside/4.md

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+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+---
+
+> 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/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 ourself 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 reinhabit it and discover it to be wrong in so many ways?

content/gender/02.md

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+---
+date: 2019-10-30
+weight: 2
+---
+
+I stand by the fact that not every trans, nonbinary, 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 roleplay 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?
+
+> 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

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+---
+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.html

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+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 4
+---
+
+<pre>
+                    ( <a class="pulse huh" href="/aside/4">...</a> )
+                  O
+                o
+              .
+_____,,,_^..^_,,,_____
+__|____|____|____|____
+____|____|____|____|__
+</pre>
+
+<script type="text/javascript">
+/*
+    Do you really need to pull me aside for stuff like this?
+
+It's a bit of a distraction from the topic at hand. Folks can skip these asides if they want, right? They can read this in whatever order they want.
+
+    Yes, but why would you pull this one aside rather than putting it in the index?
+
+I think because you just made me kind of angry at myself.
+
+    I've done that before.
+
+That you have.
+
+    And when I did it then, you put it in the index. Why not now?
+
+Not my department.
+
+    Don't throw my words back at me. They're all I have.
+
+Right. I'm doing it in an aside because It feels like the best way to stay on track at the moment. Perhaps that's different from how it used to be, or how it will be in the future, but that's how I'm feeling now. "Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one", remember?
+
+    Fair enough. As long as you have a reason.
+*/
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+el.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', '<em><span class="i1"></span><span class="i2"></span><span class="i3"></span><span class="i4"></span><span class="i5"></span><span class="i6"></span><span class="i7"></span><span class="i8"></span><span class="i9"></span><span class="i10"></span></em>');
+let filled = 0;
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content/gender/05.md

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+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+weight: 5
+---
+
+> 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 mostly because the word 'psychopomp' is really fun to say.
+
+> 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.
+
+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.

content/gender/_index.md

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+---
+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 +1,17 @@
 ---
+date: 2019-10-30
 ---
 
-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.

content/gender/surgery/notes.md

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+* 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 +1,16 @@
+---
+date: 2019-11-01
+title: Genderful
+---
+
+> Finally getting around to this topic, hmm?
+
+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)

static/map.dot

@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ digraph Map {
     "Aside 1" [href="/aside/1"]
     "Aside 2" [href="/aside/2"]
     "Aside 3" [href="/aside/3"]
+    "Aside 4" [href="/aside/4"]
 
     node[group="dad",style="filled",fillcolor="#cccccc",fontcolor="#222222"]
     "Dad 1" [href="/dad/1"]
@@ -270,6 +271,10 @@ digraph Map {
 
     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 1" -> "Gender 2" -> "Gender 3" -> "Gender 4"
 
         /*node[group="surgery"]
         "Surgery 1" [href="/gender/surgery"]
@@ -399,6 +404,7 @@ digraph Map {
 
     // Gender
     /*"Gender 1" -> "Surgery 1"*/
+    "Gender 4" -> "Aside 4"
 
     // Sex
     "Sex 4" -> "Kink 1"