Y’know, when I signed up for this back in June I had grand plans for some grand writeup on the domestically produced unmagnified gunsights of Cuba. I had collected images and info and sources but I lost sight of it as life stuff happened and my time for the trans mega snuck up on me.
Que sera sera.
Anyways, today felt like the first whisper (you have no idea how hard I just thought about the ideal word for this metaphor) of autumn and that put me in the mood for one of my favorite autumnal albums. More Constant Than the Gods by SubRosa is a really lovely doom? sludge? metal album. I like how big it sounds. The lead vocalist is a really talented lady, and its got violins, also the lyrics talk about dying and stuff and I’m into that. Its very fall-y to me, as is Standard Time Volume 1 by Wynton Marsalis, but for extremely different reasons.
The funny thing is that, like the poster of the previous mega it is also my 5th transiversary, I started HRT half a decade ago today (ok technically it was the 17th but I’m gonna count it since thats when I started writing this). Now, I don’t think that taking HRT was what made me “officially trans”, rather it was the degree of self acceptance required to get to that point. It’s a long story, and one I prefer to share privately, but it took a very, very long time before my fear and desperation gave me the strength to allow myself to have this. I think it all turned out pretty well, I experience existence in much higher fidelity, I’m this whole person, along with everything that entails.
I feel very blessed to be transgender.
I hope you all stay safe and have a good, or atleast tolerable week.
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So where I am we do Pride in August, to mark the August 28, 1971 We Demand rally at Parliament; it was the first major queer rights action in Canada, so it serves a historical reminder of our own liberation movements rather than tying the queer narrative here to America’s history. This is something I think is actually really interesting, because so much of Canadian politics is tied up in American media that Canadians often have little to no idea about the history of social movements here. This can be dangerous, because it allows American narrative-building to supersede our own–erasing the struggles fought by people here, but also allowing social shifts in America to seamlessly integrate into the Canadian discourse.
Anyway, that same phenomenon also means that regardless of Pride being in August, June Pride is absolutely still celebrated here (because American media tells everyone this is Pride month, and much of the world has followed suit and celebrates Pride in June).
This results in Pride beginning in June, and then “officially” happening in August. No one wants to “de-Pride” the city in July only to have to “re-Pride” it in August, however, so what actually ends up happening is an entire Pride summer where from the end of May until the end of August the entire city is covered in Pride flags and people throw “Pride” events the entire time.
Basically my city the last few years has decided in gay summers, where the only part of the year with nice weather is entirely packed full of drag shows and queer karaoke. This also coincides with a country music festival, which had some friction at first but now all the country straights who come to do their rootin tootin yeehawing in the “big city” (the whole place is rural as hell, so the city is not “big”) just get blasted to shitty music and then go dancing to Chapelle Roan with the queens.