liongirlofficial

Latest Posts by liongirlofficial

themessangerpigeons

self-love/self-hate

Даная\Danaë by Andrey Surnov

"Inseparable" 16"x20" 2025 Acrylic, paint pen on Aquabord

Two peas in a pod, these two! Prints available.

just. dont ever talk about any experience of sexist oppression having anything to do with a person's assigned sex at birth. i promise you that whatever you're going through """""""as an afab""""""""""""" is something that trans women routinely experience as well, and that for them it's worsened by transmisogyny. YES this includes reproductive health access dont even fucking start with me. have you ever even heard of a women's health clinic providing trans women with reproductive banking, or any options that would make it possible for them to become mothers at all? no? okay. every single sexist experience under the sun is one that impacts trans women except in their case they are completely erased from mainstream feminist conversations about the issue at all. none of this is afab specific and you dont just sound like a terf when you say that it is, you in actual fact are promoting transmisogyny. instead of issuing such exclusionary blanket statements you can just have some amount of humility and curiosity on the matter and listen to trans women

a conversation between lunargaze and bisexual-slime

LG: I always warn people that casually wearing a binder led directly to a crazy increase in dysphoria & the feeling that I needed surgery immediately. A huge amount of the reason I ended up getting a mastectomy was to stop having to feel the panic-attack inducing compression of a binder. B-S: 6 years of consistent binding left me with increased muscle and joint pain and shortness of breath. I stopped for good November 2020 and I don't regret it. It also increased by chest dysphoria and now that I've stopped binding, I've found easier and healthier ways of coping. If you really must conceal your chest out of dysphoria, I'd suggest a comfortable sports bra (do NOT get one smaller than your size. get the correct size) and looser layers and fabrics. This has helped me massively, as has foregoing bras completely, sports bras included. I'd encourage you to at least give this method a shot because it's genuinely been so beneficial and helpful for me.

LG: Absolutely. If I had the thought to just like, stop wearing bras at that point in my life I can’t imagine how different things would be for me right now.

And let me tell you, nothing made my chest dysphoria worse than a mastectomy :/ it breaks my heart seeing more and more people like me expecting the affirming whole-feeling result and just ending up with more issues.

BS: I've always had chest dysphoria but it's only been in the past couple of years I've drifted away from the surgical route in favour of physical exercise to get the result I want. I recognised my goals were not realistic and my chest would always cause me problems post surgery, plus I was scared I would regret such a major operation so I just decided against it and decided I would prefer to implement a work out routine because I've seen that kind of thing done with smaller chests (I'm an A) so it seemed like an easier option. My heart always breaks for women who have been fed an idealistic image of themselves that can only be attained through surgery and end up with more mental and physical problems than they started out with.

thinking about detransition? you are not alone

NASA Data Sonification: Black Hole Remix

In this sonification of Perseus. the sound waves astronomers previously identified were extracted and made audible for the first time. The sound waves were extracted outward from the center. (source)

(Please endure the shitty editing, I have no idea what I'm doing)

Thanks to Rachel Ott whose greenhouse I found on Pinterest and used as an inspiration. She has her own templates on her DIY blog "Entertain the Idea".

The Zelda specific templates I made myself.

why is privacy so eroded. I get treated like a nutcase if I say no, I don't want strange companies taking pictures of my home and putting them online for maps or whatever. I don't want to be in the background of your tiktok, and I think it's weirder for you to assume I'm okay with it than it is for me to politely ask you to refilm it so my face isn't in the frame. I don't enjoy handing my employer a list of every online account I have and feeling under surveillance when I'm just shit posting or sharing pictures of my cats or garden harvest. I don't want to hear your private calls on speaker on the bus, esp when the person on the line doesn't know you're broadcasting their words to strangers. I don't want an algorithm guessing what will piss me off the most so I spend more time online, engaging with shit I don't want to see or hear out of outrage. I don't want any of this. it's total ass.

dear people with OCD: the next time you have spiraling & intrusive thoughts, what-ifs, or catastrophizing scenarios, I am sending a cardigan-wearing 46-year old NYU professor directly into your brain and he says "Aaaaand scene!!!" and he claps his hands slowly. and he says "Wow. Wow. Powerful stuff. Evocative imagery. A little bit post-modern, a little bit hysterical realism in the vein of Don Delilo but let's pause right here." and you will recognize your thoughts as a perplexing avant-garde film shown to an audience of 15 liberal arts students who are now trying to get a good grade and sleep with their professor.

I feel like I would have been diagnosed with OCD a lot earlier if the vast majority of screening questions (for mental illnesses in general) weren't based on the person's perception of their own behavior, in isolation. and what i mean by that is asking someone with OCD "do you wash your hands excessively?" is not a good question.

a person with OCD believes they are washing their hands the correct number of times. it's not excessive. we believe we're exhibiting best practices and helping to keep everything clean.

better questions might be, "does it seem like you wash your hands a lot more than your friends or family?" "do you get dry patches or cuts on your hands from washing your hands?" "do you find it deeply distressing, more so than how you've seen other people react, when you get something on your hands that you can't clean off right away?"

being asked "are you overly preoccupied with bugs, symmetry, and contamination?" also got "no" responses from me years ago in my life. what they didn't ask for, and didn't know, was what *exactly* I was doing in my day to day life that genuinely ate up my time and mental space to a concerning degree, but I *didn't know* that other people don't do this.

"do you spend a lot of time cleaning?" -> no, it's not a lot. it's a good amount. why?

"do you become frustrated because it seems like no one else meets your organizational and cleanliness standards - do you often 'take over' for other people because they can't do it right - do new friends seem surprised by how strict you can be about your living space?" -> oh. yeah. yeah I get it now.

Patch Pants update

It’s been a few months since I last posted a pic of my pants, here’s the wear that happened:

I oil paint a CONSIDERABLE amount in these (before I discovered an apron) so the paint stains are from that. I don’t care

I removed the pocket. It clashed with the rest of my pants

I’m patching over the Kittie band patch, it was far too big

I painted over the old canvas patches, now they’re nice and shiny :)

Finished patching the lower left cuff, since I was too lazy to do it before

Really debating making a new pair, skinnier ones since these are so “loud” persay. Probably not though, just a thought

Say what ever you want about their music, but their album covers are amazing

We make noise not music!!!

recent big passion project of mine :] really happy with it

growing up, my mum always told me, whenever i went to the doctors or any sort of health professional, that it was important that i told them that i was hypermobile. she'd done the tests with me (herself being hypermobile and disabled in large part because of it) and though she didn't know the details, she knew that hypermobility was important to have in my health record.

so it was to my great surprise and displeasure that, whenever i told doctors i was hypermobile, it was skipped over. never addressed, never touched on, not even a comment to belie what that meant for me. i myself didn't know the impact hypermobility could have on a person, but my mother had been insistent about that fact. it was important, so why did no one else seem to think so?

i grew up with kids in school who were on the extreme ends of hypermobility. i knew a boy in middle school who could put both feet behind his head. i knew a girl in high school with long, spindly fingers who showed me how far backwards her arm could bend.

both of them had health problems, which became more profound as they aged. i never knew the details, but it stuck out that they were hypermobile, and so was i, and with my own health declining there HAD to be a connection.

common knowledge gives the vague definition of hypermobility as extra stretchy muscles, of being double-jointed. it comes with warnings not to push your hypermobile body into the extremes. don't overextend, you will hurt yourself.

the warnings are warranted. the importance isn't overplayed. these things i knew, but i didn't know why. and without knowing why, they were warnings that i could never truly obey, despite how conservative i became with my movements in a vain attempt to protect what little ability i had left.

hypermobility is NOT stretchy muscles. muscles are supposed to stretch. in fact, it's important to their health (those conservative movements prolly hurt more than helped!). hypermobility affects connectives tissues, and lands under the umbrella of Ehlers-Danlos Sydromes (there are a few) which can range in severity from affecting skin and tendons to affecting blood vessels and organs.

severity is rare, and much easier to catch. this post is for the people who are "a little hypermobile" so that they can understand what makes their body different.

a muscle and its associated tendons are like a hammock. the muscle is the fabric you lie in, stretching to accomodate the load. tendons are the rope that attaches the fabric to the trees, providing a secure anchor for the muscle to operate.

so, what happens when the ropes on the hammock are also stretchy? well, you sit in the hammock and your ass hits the ground.

now imagine that the fabric of the hammock has the ability to clench like a muscle. a normal hammock doesn't need to work that hard to stop ass from meeting ground, because it has sturdy anchors. a hammock with stretchy rope, however, must exert several times more effort, because the more the muscle pulls, the more the tendons stretch.

in short, hypermobility forces your muscles to work harder, because they must first pass the threshold of stretch the tendons are capable of before it can actually do the task it's meant to do. the stretchier the tendons, the harder the muscle needs to clench, the easier it is to overwork.

this info reframed everything i was doing with my body. small tasks of strength required the effort of much larger tasks, and larger tasks ranged from extremely difficult to impossible. holding my arms up so i could work above my head required monumental effort. with an anatomical peculiarity of the feet, i needed to use several muscles in my calves and hips just to stand without losing balance.

so no fucking wonder i crashed and burned in my 20s, when everything i did took all of my strength to accomplish. no wonder i would contort myself out of shape, so flexible that i could anchor myself into extreme poses just to give my muscles a moment of relief, overstretching myself without ever realizing why, and what damage i could be doing.

so, some things to remember:

overextending isn't good for you, but it shouldn't be your biggest concern. instead, be aware of overexertion, both how LONG you are using a muscle without breaks and how HARD you are using it.

small, frequent breaks are your best friend if you need to do something for awhile.

when you take breaks, stretch the muscles you'd been using.

if you need to exert effort to maintain a pose (whether it's sitting, standing, etc) examine whether you need to be clenching those muscles, and why.

actually whenever you are using muscles, try to train yourself to use as few as possible. you can practice by sitting or standing, and relaxing as many muscles as you can before you tip over. finding a sense of balance can make your life so much easier.

become acquainted with what relaxed muscles feel like. chronic tension can distort your perception of this, and result in habitual tension.

so yeah. if you're hypermobile, that's important. don't let a doctor's dismissal make you think otherwise. take care of yourself and know what you are and aren't capable of.

They’re passive aggressively cleaning each others faces in the banana bed rn

They’re passive aggressively cleaning each others faces in the banana bed rn

CONNIE PANZARINO at a pride march in Boston circa 1990

[ID: Connie is marching along in her sip 'n' puff (SNP) wheelchair. She is wearing a patterned poncho and sporting a green felt party crown on her head. She styles a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with her slicked back hair. She is smiling. Attached to the back of her wheelchair is a large green cardboard poster that reads "Trached Dykes Eat Pussy Without Comin' Up For Air!" followed by a pink upside-down triangle with a stick figure person in a wheelchair at the centre (a symbol for disabled women)].

the cyborg & the crip by Alison Kafer

[ID: “Trached dykes eat pussy without coming up for air.” Connie Panzarino, a longtime disability activist and out lesbian, would attach this sign to her wheelchair during Pride marches in Boston in the early 1990s. Shockingly explicit, her sign refuses to cast technology as cold, distancing, or disembodied/disembodying, presenting it instead as a source and site of embodied pleasure. “Trach” is an abbreviation of tracheotomy, a medical procedure in which a breathing tube is inserted directly into the trachea, bypassing the mouth and nose. Someone with a trach, then, can, in effect, breathe through her throat, freeing her mouth for other activities (another version of this sign is “Trached dykes french kiss without coming up for air”). From a cyborgian perspective, this sign is brilliantly provocative and productive. It draws on the pervasive idea that adaptive technologies grant superior abilities,not merely replacing a lost capacity but enhancing it, yet it does so in a highly subversive way. The message here isn’t about blending in, about passing as normal or hypernormal, but about publicly announcing the viability of a queer disabled location. It’s disnormalizing, adamantly refusing compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory able bodiedness, and homonormativity. As Corbett O’Toole argues, it challenges the perceived passivity of disabled women, presenting them as actively pleasuring their partners, thereby graphically refuting stereotypes linking physical disability with nonsexuality.]

recent big passion project of mine :] really happy with it

ari b. cofer, Unfold: Poetry + Prose

you don't need to be shitty to people whose voices WERE damaged by testosterone just for an own

I actually can't shout or scream anymore, because of testosterone. there are things in the world that happen to some people but not everyone :o

Normal day on the ftm tag huh

For 2 days in a row I have seen this little guy removing leaves from my plant and eating them until he passes out. He's missing an ear, so he may be self-medicating his PTSD, but still, I think it's time for an intervention.

I'll let him sleep this time, but when he wakes up, we'll have a serious talk.

Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters Of Mercy

[ Text; This System's comfort media is Neon Genesis Evangelion]

there don't seem to be many people talking about it even here - does anyone else experience selective/situational mutism? are people just tending to wrap it up with autistic speech difficulty/loss, ""going nonverbal"" etc?

I've really been struggling with communication at uni. this has been a bottleneck in my functionality my whole life but I kind of assumed when I was younger that I would have somehow got over it by now.

it doesn't feel entirely accurate to call myself semiverbal/speaking because in many situations I CAN communicate verbally and my brain generally is very compatible with language. but sometimes that just doesn't matter and I'm just frozen staring like a deer in headlights. it even happens with my husband. it's really scary and feels like I'm behind a wall observing the world but unable to interact with it

I'm realizing I need better strategies for working with this, but I don't know what to do or what will help. I don't have friends or family who deal with it

just because a person cannot speak

doesnt mean they dont understand or have nothing to say