CW: suicidal ideation, self harm

Part 1: Never intended this body to last me a lifetime

I have a strange relationship to growing older. Today is my birthday, and that means I'm yet another year older than I was planning.

I was born with this indescribable feeling that I was going to die young; not for any particular reason, I just didn't feel like a sustainable life form.

I covered the wallpaper in tattoos I didn't want; crying and screaming, I tore myself up and left the edges frayed.

Part 2: I am making my vessel habitable

One day I woke up and had somehow become an adult. And even stranger: I was happy. Pure, uncomplicated happiness.

And I woke up this morning and still was. And now I want to live. I love my house and I want to decorate it to my liking.

Getting my breasts removed was the first step; then it was removing the tattoos; then getting new ones; then stitching the frayed edges.

On the 27th of April, I will be back under the knife, but this time it's because I love myself [...]

Read More

Read More

It’s the last day of 2022. It’s time to say goodbye.

I’m not very good at goodbyes. Often I’ve snuck away from events without anyone noticing, because the thought of having to face departing from loved ones seemed unbearable. Not facing them for this moment of ‘I hope it won’t be years before I get to hold you next’ was easier. I don’t want to be that person anymore, so here I am, saying goodbye to the year of 2022. And what a year.

It was a year of falling in love. In love with places, things, ideas, people. I fell in love with a clever young man who I could listen to talk for hours. I fell in love with a stranger with a delicate face whose name I still haven’t dared to ask, because faces like hers make me too nervous to speak. I fell in love with someone very unexpected. I fell in love with the idea of a stunning someone and had to shake my head at my overactive imagination, which tends to take unsuspecting people hostage and [...]

Read More

CW: dødsfald

Sidst i oktober mistede jeg et vigtigt menneske.

Jeg var 13 år gammel, da jeg første gang mødte en mand, som introducerede sig som ‘Onkel Thorsen’. Det stod ret hurtigt klart for mig, at han så noget i mig, som jeg ikke selv havde mødt endnu.

På det tidspunkt i mit liv, kendte jeg kun til to ting, der var værd at kunne lide ved mig: Det faktum, at jeg var dygtig i skolen, og min krop, som så småt var begyndt at nærme sig noget, der mindede folk omkring mig om, at jeg en dag skulle blive en voksen kvinde. Sidstnævnte var nyt og spændende og skræmmende, og helt tydeligt ikke noget, der var op til mig at bestemme over. Det var en kategori, der blev tvunget ned over mig, om jeg brød mig om det eller ej.

Da jeg begyndte at komme i det, jeg shorthand-agtigt referer til som ‘(voksen)nørdemiljøet’, oplevede jeg igen og igen hvordan voksne mænd [...]

Read More

Heidegger took one look at it and thought: Ah, yes, I know what that is! It's a hammer! And its broken! Watch me be so smart and have so many big thoughts about phenomenology. But the hammer never was broken. In fact, it was no hammer in the first place. It kept being admonished for not hammering well, but the idea that it should have was a misunderstanding from the beginning. It would make a fantastic chopstick, if only it'd get some better friends than those early-20th century philosophy bros.

Read More

CW: dysphoria, the gender binary 

On my way home from the larp 'Pleasing Women' run 1 and am having some feelings about womanhood. This is absolutely pleasing to me; having this be a likely consequence of going to the game was one of the reasons why I attended.

Spending two whole days trying my very best to embody an elegant, delicate woman was such a trip. Womanhood so often feels like this role which was and continues to be forced on me; no matter how I dress, sit, laugh, surgically alter my body, etc, it often doesn't seem to make even a dent in the assumption of gender which people make when they see me: Ah, yes, that one fits the woman box. But, at Pleasing Women, the weirdest thing happened: While all (non-NPC) characters were women, meaning that I didn't have to prove this fact to anyone, whether one was doing a good job of being one was up for debate. Many of my co-players knew that I was supposed to be playing a high femme queen and therefore reacted to me accordingly. [...]

Read More

CW: parental abuse, death, serious illness, surgery, laissez-faire use of academic jargon because YOLO

“Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.” (hooks 2000, All About Love, p. 22)

The following is an attempt to structure my thoughts about fatherhood. My feelings about the topic are somewhat chaotic and scattered, and as a result, this text/essay/processing-out-loud is likely to be too. It was written through tears, as the inspiration to write about this came on the 21st of September 2022 while I waited to learn if my beloved godfather would survive yet another heart surgery, this time one which involved a significant risk of death. For that reason, I also think about it as somewhat of a love letter to him and expression of gratitude for how much his devotion to loving me and my brother unconditionally, [...]

Read More

hvad nu hvis jeg var din elsker, eller

din morgenquickie
din plan B
din hulrumsisolering
din mandagsfisse
din sommerflirt
din storeske
din enecelle
din tirsdagssnack
din overbolle
din underbolle
din smøreost
din varmestue
din våddragt
din onsdagssnegl
din tredje hånd
din slyngveninde
din slyngelveninde
din bonuskæreste
din torsdagselsker
din fingerfletter
din legekammerat
din skyttegrav
din Romeo
din Julie
din bloddåb
din fredagskæreste
din Eders have
din lørdagsbrunch
din overspringshandling
din lækkerbisken
din søndagsmesse

A go-to conversational topic in autistic spaces is why the neurotypicals wouldn't just ask for the damn salt if that's what they want. Why bother with the confusing and round-about "can you..."?. The answer: Politeness. Or, to be a bit more specific, social conventions for linguistic politeness. And precisely social conventions are something autistic people often struggle with; in the words of Carpenter (2013), autistic people are commonly “unaware of social conventions/appropriate social behavior” and “makes socially inappropriate statements” (3). But, while neurotypical people are adept at learning these conventions, asking them to explain how they work is a bit like asking a random native speaker to explain the grammar of their mother tongue; you’ll probably just be met with a shrug. Or, you might be lucky to meet a linguist. And that’s where I come in. Let’s dive into The Salt Question.

To understand politeness as it shows up in speech, we [...]

Read More

This blog post is the first in a mini series I'm writing where I will explore ideas from linguistics (in particular from the field of pragmatics, but I will likely touch on concepts from semantics and sociolinguistics too). This is not meant as a how-to guide for autistic people to learn to communicate like neurotypicals; I'll be the first person to tell you that neurotypical communication is not an ideal to strive towards. As an autistic person, I feel much more comfortable in spaces where a neurodivergent communication style is observed, the specifics of which I'm still working on putting into words. However, I do believe that it can make our autistic lives easier to understand the principles neurotypical people follow and expect you to follow when it comes to communication. Furthermore, non-autistic people becoming conscious of the subconscious principles guiding their conversations could also help them understand their autistic loved ones better. We (usually) mean no harm, we just [...]

Read More

LINK TIL 'ER JEG LESBISK?'

De sidste måneder har min veninde Ella Wiberg og jeg arbejdet på en dansk oversættelse af Am I a Lesbian?, i folkemunde (aka mestendels TikTok) kendt som The Lesbian Masterdoc eller blot The Masterdoc. 

Da Vice skrev en artikel om doc'et, beskrev de det således:

"In January of 2018, a Tumblr user with the handle @cyberlesbian posted a public Google document on her blog. Titled “Am I a Lesbian?,” the 30-page text offered a road map for women questioning their sexual identities, broken down in sections with labels like “Conflicting Feelings about Men” and “Attraction Vs. Compulsory Heterosexuality.” [...] "In the years since it was first posted, the “Am I a Lesbian?” doc has become something of a cult classic on the lesbian internet, although its author, Angeli Luz, has until now been mostly anonymous. The Tumblr post in which Luz shared the document has received more than 30,000 [...]

Read More

Read More

CW: seksuelt misbrug af børn

Jeg har for nylig fået udgivet en kronik hos Information (jf. evt. kilder). En kronik må kun være på ca. 7400 tegn og derfor måtte jeg slette næsten halvdelen af det, jeg gerne ville inkludere. Selvom min kronik, mir zufolge, dækker alt det vigtigste, vil jeg heri dele pointer, jeg ikke kunne passe ind på 1,5 normalsider.

1. Når overgrebspersoner udnytter en naturlig, seksuel nysgerrighed hos børn og unge

Jeg er nødt til at behandle et emne, som er virkelig akavet og ukomfortabelt, hvad om noget er et argument for, at vi skal tale mere om det: Mange teenagere, hvis ikke ligefrem de fleste, har en seksualitet eller som minimum en seksuel nysgerrighed. Teenagere får crushes på spejderledere, lærere, pædagoger et cetera. Jeg har selv arbejdet med den aldersgruppe og har oplevet mere end én gang, at et ungt menneske viste interesse i mig, og som den voksne [...]

Read More

Thank you for being here. What a gift that is.

CW: sex, biphobia

In this post I'll paraphrase and answer questions I'm often asked when I talk to people about my polyamory practice. I also intend to share this with potential future lovers and partners who aren't as familiar with polyamory or who are curious about my exact views on non-monogamy. If the latter describes you: Welcome! It's lovely to have you!

1. Is it an identity or choice? 

I don't know and I don't think it's important. I generally tend to lean towards calling it a choice for the simple reason that I want to leave the door open for people to try it out even if they haven't felt drawn to the relationship structure for as long as they can remember (i.e.: the 'born this way'-narrative).

2. So, lots of casual sex? 

Depends on what you mean by 'casual'. I don't want sex without feelings, but the feelings could just be 'I think you're really cool' or 'I want you to have a positive experience' or 'I feel a deep emotional, nearly spiritual, connection to you, and [...]

Read More

Link til læserbrev i Jyllands-Posten.

Link til tekst uden paywall.

Addis Koefoed Nielsen

Agusta Eir Vigfusdottir

Alex Bjerre

Alex Grønvall

Alex Thorn, ph.d.-studerende

Alexandra Alice Holm-Christensen, psykologistuderende

Alf Lundgren Standly

Alice Alvilda Hornstrup Jensen

Alma Palma Anderson, studerende

Amalie Letholm Skaarup, butiksassistent

Amanda Fraenkel Mortensen, pædagogstuderende

Amanda Özek

Amaryllis Kirstine Petersen, studerende

Amelie Troldborg, sexarbejder

Anastasia Ozerova, studerende

Anders Petersen

Andrea Horndrup, socialrådgiver og forfatter

Andreas Andrä-Fredsted, studerende ved CBS

Andreas Boye, studerende ved DTU

Andreas Hykkelbjerg Hertz, studerende

Andreas Lykke Jensen, cand. comm.

Andreas Westmark Gajhede

Andrew Bols

Anita Andersen

Anker Väinö Thomsen

Anna Astrid H. Calero, folketingskandidat for Alternativet

Anna Atlas Matzen, Sales Manager

Anna Bjerre Johansen, miljøplanlægningsstuderende ved RUC

[...]

Read More

A fresh fade

Baby queers

Back in my day gays furiously fighting for the baby queers

Bad art with lots of heart

Being a bit confused in an erotic way

Being in a room where gender feels irrelevant

Belly fluff

Butts

Days like these

Exile and Pride by Eli Clare

Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein

Genderpunks with nothing to prove

Having sex without genitals being involved

Is this my sweat or your sweat?

Mutual aid

Not needing to explain anything

Not needing to explain but doing it anyway

Orgies disrupted by a passionate exchange of ideas

Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown

Queer friendship

Queering friendship

Recognising nothing in another and feeling overwhelmingly intrigued

Recognising some of myself in another

Reinventing myself

Reinventing what a good life is

Speaking Sex to Power by Patrick Califia-Rice

That moment when you realise that everyone in the room is trans

The first time you feel like you have arrived

The promise of happiness by Sarah Ahmed

Undressing someone and being [...]

Read More

CW: abuse, bullying

I don't wear my feelings on my sleeve. I wear them in my flapping hands, my twitchy legs, my eyes which somehow just became twice as big, my mouth always telling on me. Often I'm overcome with wonder at the most inexplicable things, like the way it feels to rub my forehead against certain fabrics or the fact that Jacaltec has a noun class for dogs only. Other times my wonder is activated by the most obvious ones, such as beautiful new people whose dots I want to connect or getting to be present while an old friend has an epiphany.

My ability to experience excitement like a jolt of electricity throughout my entire body is my greatest source of joy. It is, however, also what I most often wish I could change about myself. I'm terrified of it. Why? Because it reveals that I truly care about the thing in question, and really caring makes you vulnerable. Vulnerability isn't in itself scary, but if you have spent long stretches of time in situations where it was taken [...]

Read More

CW: abuse, queerphobia, bioessentialism

The queer community is not big on 'phases'. It's very understandable; most young queers have, through cultural messaging, family or 'friends', been accused of 'just going through a phase'. The implication of this is generally that the youth in question will eventually grow out of their identity and into a cis, straight, allosexual one, buy a house (as if anyone can afford that sort of thing in 2022), involve themselves in the conception of biological offspring, et cetera. In order to defend ourselves against these demeaning attacks, we have collectively adopted narratives such as 'born this way', which establish our identities as stable and permanent from the time we were born. While this narrative might be accurate to some people's experience, it excludes anyone who didn't have a strong sense of who they were from an early age, but it also implicitly establishes change as inherently less authentic than staying the same.

For most areas of our [...]

Read More

CW: queerphobia, sexual assault, mental illness, HIV, femicide

I've been thinking a lot about queer temporality recently and the ways in which my relationship to time as a queer person as well as someone who is generally perceived as a woman makes it hard for me to experience intimacy with people who do not share these experiences. I cannot take my future as a given in the same way people inhabiting normative male bodies do.

I have grown up with a sense that I was not going to live very long; The people who looked like me were murdered and raped by people who were supposed to love and the world didn't seem too bothered by this; I was targeted by bullies, adults and peers, who took issue with my non-normative gender expression, which made my body feel like an unsafe and fragile home. As an adult I've experienced suicide and addiction kill my peers, and I've seen my trans friends suffer from preventable illness because of uneducated doctors blaming completely unrelated illness on their [...]

Read More

CW: sexual abuse, abuse of minors, PTSD, victim blaming

I want to break up with being a survivor and proudly embrace victimhood.

Being a victim is commonly defined as being or behaving as a passive object of misfortune. It makes sense that we don't like people who embrace this fact about their stories, as it reminds us that we too could be reduced to a plaything by someone more powerful. We would like to think that we have some control over what happens to us; this is why it is so common to hear questions such as 'well, what was she wearing?' or 'what did she expect getting so drunk?' in response to stories about women suffering sexual assault. Even though most of us realize that people who want to hurt will find a way to do so, there is a comfort in tracing a victim's steps and figuring out where they went wrong and caused themself to become a target. I will no longer support people around me in their attempts to live in this comfort. The world needs us to wear our victimhood [...]

Read More

CW: incels, misogyny, hate speech, sex

I find the manosphere fascinating. Last year, I spent countless hours in incel and pickup artist fora analysing the metaphors the users make use of when discussing seduction as part of writing my thesis. One of the most widespread source domains I identified was 'economic transactions'. This wasn't too surprising, as this is the case in mainstream discourse as well: We talk about 'investing' in relationships, being on 'the dating market' et cetera. What was different about the way incels were using the metaphor was the way they seemed to have taken it to its logical extreme, discussing and quantifying the 'market value' of themselves and their 'targets'. In this way, these communities became a mirror reflecting popular ways of thinking and talking about intimacy which are easy to overlook when expressed only through conventionalized metaphorical expressions.

Other than my findings being interesting to me as a linguist and scary as a feminist, it [...]

Read More