Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Gender Issues

I’m getting my freak on, part three

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When I say I’m getting my freak on, I mean in my daily non-sexytimes life. I’m not getting any, sadly, and I’m not in a place to do something about it. Maybe I’ll make it goal for next year–just to get laid, I mean. I’m not looking for a relationship, and I don’t really want to date. I miss sex–that’s about it.

Before that, here’s my post from yesterday in which I talked about how I actually like most of my differences now. And back to the post.

See, I’m not a good partner. It’s funny how people get uncomfortable when I say it–just likpeople were uncomfortable when I’ve said that I would not be a good mother. Or that I was fat. The last one is particularly humorous to me because of how deeply embeded in American’s collective psyche it is that ‘fat’ is a deep insult. “You’re not fat; you’re just fluffy.” No, I’m fat. F-A-T.

I think this is part of my neurodivergence, but it’s also me working hard to accept parts of myself that I used to hate. I loathed my body until my medical crisis for several reasons*. Sometime in my early thirties, I made my peace with being fat–though I did not like it. It wasn’t until my medical crisis that I fully embraced my body.

Up until that point , I thought of it as a vessel for my brain. I felt separated from it, though I will say that Taiji helped me integrate my brain and body to a certain extent.

Back to me being honest about myself. It’s amusing and bemusing to me when people think I’m saying something negative about myself when I’m not. I am fat. I would not have been a good mother. I am currently not a good partner. Well, I can’t say 100% as to the last because I have not dated anyone in a decade and a half, but I’m just assuming I haven’t made enough progress in that arena to be a good partner.

See, here are the problems. One, I alternate between clingy and emotionally distant on a fairly regular basis. I want to be close to someone until we are actually close, and then I want my space. I really like being alone, but there’s some deep programming in me that kicks in when I’m around someone I’m dating.

I don’t want to focus completely on the other person, but that’s the way my brain works. At the same time, I can comfortably date two (or more?) people simultaneously. I am happy when my partner is happy, including if they find love with others. However, I get jealous if I don’t get enough attention myself. And insecure. Like, no amount of love is enough. I try to keep it under control, but sometimes, it seeps out. It’s my anxiety, and it’s difficult to keep a grip on it.

It’s not anyone else’s responsibility to keep my anxieties at bay. That’s up to me. Many times, it’s a struggle that I allow to consume me. I try not to let it out. It’s not the best way to deal with it, but it’s not the worst, either.

The thing is that it’s tricky to figure out which weirdo parts of me that are different that I actually like and don’t. I’ve spent so much of my life being reactive and defensive, it’s hard to know what’s real to me and what isn’t. I’ve had to bat down rigid gender stereotypes from my mother since I was seven. It might have been before that, too, but I don’t remember much before that age.

Actually, I don’t remember much of myy childhood at all. What I do remember is me feeling left out, severely depressed, and thighly restricted in what I was allowed to say, think, and feel. Oh, and being my mother’s emotional support person. That started when I was eleven, and it continues to today. She calls me her therapist, and she’s only half-joking, if even that. Whenever she calls, my heart sinks. (I initially wrote ‘stinks’, which is apt, too.) I have to steal myself because I know it’s going to be a trial.

My mother has strong ideas of what is right and proper (even if she doesn’t follow them herself. And, of course, she has excuses for why it’s different for her). She’s convinced that I’m a contrarian for negative reasons. Then again, she attributes most of what other people do that she doesn’t like to malice rather than just a difference of opinion. She has such a narrow point of view, it’s nearly impossible to talk to her about anything.

On the other hand, she’s easily swayed by really definitive voices–especially male ones. It’s a direct contrast of opposing traits, and while I can be symppathetic to her because I am a mass of contradictions myself, at least I’m aware of it. My mother? Not so much.

When we were talking about my brother being autistic, she mentioned that she wondered if she was as well. At first, I dismissed it as her wanting once again to co-opt other people’s issues as her own (if I have a cold, she had one that was worse. If I have trouble sleeping, it’s nothing compared to her sleep problems. I want to stress that it’s not deliberate on her side, but it’s inevitable), but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had many of the hallmarks for autism–the female version.

She does not empathize easily with other people (which took me a long time to realize because she’s a psychologist); she’s very rigid in what she thinks is wrong and right; she is not good in crowds; she can’t do small talk; she does not like to be touched. Now, it’s difficult to untangled some of this from being Taiwanese, which is part of the problem. Also, the hyperfixation is something she does, too, and the difficulty of detaching from said obsession once she’s latched her teeth on it.

One pleasant memory I have is when the two of us used to watch sports together. Football, tennis, baseball, and basketball. Oh, and several Olympic events. It’s funny because my brother and my father had no interest in watching sports, so this was strictly the female (at the time, I identified as a woman) members of the family enjoynig a traditionally manly hobby.

More later.

 

 

 

 

 

*One being that I live in a society that hates fat people, especially people with female-coded bodies. Two being my mother put me on my first diet when I was seven and endlessly nagged me about being fat until I finally put my foot down thirty years later.

Maybe you all can just CTFO, part seven

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I want to talk more about societal norms and how I just do not understand them. I mentioned in my previous post that my mother got really upset when I told her I was bi. She said, “What’s next, animals?” Which makes absolutely no sense, but that’s how she is. It’s not just her, however. It used to be a fairly common response to being told someone was queer. Again, no idea why straights’ brains go straight to animals, but I think it says more about them than it does about queer people.

In a similar vein, when talking about not wearing a bra/not shaving your legs/not wearing pantyhose (depending on what point in time we’re talking about), there are so many women that are shocked and horrified. Some even say something like, “What next, no pants in the workplace?” I mean, come on. That is not a good -faith argument, but that’s because there’s isn’t one. A good-faith argument, I mean. For wearing a bra.

Side note: It’s always funny to me when people say a hill isn’t worth dying on. Sometimes, they’re right, but sometimes, I want to point out (and someone did in the bra post) that if it’s not a big deal/a hill to die on,  then the flip should be true as well. In other words, if it’s so not a big deal, then it shouldn’t be a big deal not to not wear a bra, either.

Also, at some point, I’m sure women were saying that being able to wear pants was not a hill worth dying on. And not having to wear pantyhose. And not being able to work outside the home. Changes are incremental for the most part, and they take many people constantly sticking their necks out and making a fuss. It’s not like it went seamlessly (ha!) from women having to wear pantyhose to being allowed to wear pants. There had to be a lot of pushback because traditions do not go gentle into the night.

More to the point, why do people care about things that don’t affect them one whit? I’m not being disingenuous when I say that I don’t get freaked out by jiggling boobs–even if they are not covered. Don’t get me wrong. I love boobs. Who doesn’t? As my late gay fake-husband used to say, “Everyone loves boobs!” He used to call my boobs his pillows, which was hilarious to me.

I knew this country was puritanical, but not to that extent. If someone has their boobs covered up, who cares if there’s a slight jiggle? I mean, not to be rude about it, but plenty of men have boob jiggle (and their nipples can be seen through their shirts. Maybe not the whole nipples, but at least the point. And the argument that we view men’s nipples and women’s nipples diferently holds no water because that’s the fucking point! It’s sexism, plain and simple.


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At a loss for words, part six

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I honestly don’t understand many societal norms. People (read, my mother mostly) think I’m a contrarian, but I’m not. Or rather, that isn’t my intent. It’s just that I truly don’t understand the mindset of society much of the time.

I was reading an old Ask A Manager post (from about ten years ago, I think) about whether a woman had to shave her legs for a job interview 9or for a job in general). There was a sizeable number of people who insisted that it was ‘gross’ if she didn’t. That body hair, and in particular women’s body hair, was gross/unprofessional/unacceptable in the office.

It reminded me of a much more recent post (meaning after my medical crisis or maybe right before it, but definitely during/post COVID) in which there was an argument about bras in the workplace. Again, some people were more than adamant that a woman HAD to wear a bra in the office because it was gross otherwise. I don’t remmeber if the word ‘gross’ was used in this case, but there was many an ‘unprofessional’ being thrown around.

I made a comment that if I were covered up and nips weren’t showing, why did it matter? I said I would absolutely walk over this (the Letter Writer had mentioned that in her office, they were–OK. I just looked it up. It was in 2023, and the vast majority were women who were virulent in their support of bras. Or rather, virulent in their disdain for women* who decided not to wear them.

There were women who said it was a privileged position to choose to quit over it or make it your hill to die on, but that’s the whole point of having privilege/hills to die on. As to the first, part of checking your privilege should be followed by doing things that people who aren’t in your privileged position can’t do in order to make life better for everyone. Otherwise, what’s the point? As to the latter, you don’t get to decide what is a a hill to die on for someone else.

There were several people who were adamant that it was professional and that you should follow the dress code of your office (though it wasn’t in the dress code of the LW). Someone asked quite reasonably if the dress code was that you could not wear a bra in the office, would they ‘suck it up’ (which someone mentioned) and rip off their bra?

I wasn’t surprised that most people were pro-bra; I was surprised how vicious they got in going for the status quo, though. As more than one person pointed out, things didn’t change without people agitating for that change.

The number of women who said no one wanted to see the jiggling and/or they wouldn’t hire a woman that didn’t wear a bra, sadly, was not surprising. Women often are the ones to hold up the patriarchy, which is one of the greatest tricks of man. If they  can get women to do it for them, then they can spend less time on it.

(Resisting to go on a rant about the patriarchy and dieting, which is not the point of this post.)

I can’t understand getting all worked up over something so meaningless. Tellingly, one person did the slippery slope argument and said that what next, no pants? It’s always wild to me when people do the slippery slope argument and then bust out something ridiculous. My mother did it when I told her I was bi–she said, “What next, animals?”


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Free to be a weirdo, part four

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Let’s talk more about being a weirdo. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how sometimes, I wished I could be normal. Believe it or not, I’m not trying to be difficult most of the time–it’s just that I was born that way. I was musing about how much easier life would have been if I could have just been ‘normal, but that’s folly.

What I mean is that I can sit and speculate about how different my life would have been if I was normal, but I can’t verify it. It alsways irk me when people state confidently what would have happened if something or the other (big) had been different. Usually, in a toxic positivity way.

The one that really got to me was people who said that they would not change anything about their pasts because it made them who they were. I would ABSOLUTELY change certain things in my life because it would make me better! The heavy emotional abuse? Gone. The nightmare relationship in Thailand? It would be no more. The feeling like an alien and that I should not be alive that dominated my childhood? Erased in a heartbeat.

I also take issue with the people who said that going through trauma made you more empathetic. There are other ways to be empathetic, thank you, and I would like to think I would have been, anyway, without all the abuse.

I don’t know if I would have been a better, more functional person without the trauma I experienced, but I sure as hell would like to have a shot at it. Would I take no abuse and not knowing how it would turn out over what happened to me? 100%, in a heartbeat, no hesitation. How is that even a question?

I know I can’t change my past, obviously, but that trauma still lingers. Taiji has helped a great deal, and so has Bagua. So has love. So has me just saying fuck it to a certain extent. The realization that I’ll never be normal whatever that is was so freeing. I’m not saying it isn’t still a struggle because it is.

Side note: I find it amusing when people advocate for being your true self. What they usually mean is, “Be your true self–oh, not that true self.” What I mean is that most people mean a two-deviation-from-the-norm true self, not a ‘what the fuck is THAT?” true self. Like weird is being a vegan Crossfitter. Weird is not being agender, areligious, into Taiji and Bagua weaponry, and being ENM. Not to mention bisexual. And just not giving a damn about 90% of things society deems important. Oh, and neurodivergent.

Any one of those things would be considered weird. Some of them are considered deviant, evil, vile, disgusting, etc., by a huge chunk of people. Not just Americans, but that’s the society I know best. It’s interesting. I’ve been listening to a lot of Stray Kids content, and while they are pioneers in music and very ‘weird’ for Kpop, they actually adhere quite closely to Korean norms (as I understand them). Personally, I mean.

I’ve watched quite a bit of their content and realized that they would disapprove of me as a person. Yes, they say eveyrone should be their own person, but they have made it pretty clear that their attitudes toward alternative lifestyles (not talking queer, but ENM and gender norms to a certain extent) is negative. They have several songs about what they call ‘very bad guys’, and they’ve had arguments about who’s the worst. The guy who is mean to his ex-girlfriend including telling her how she really felt about him (which they don’t see as mean) or the guy who thought another woman was attractive, didn’t necessarily act on it, but broke up with his girlfriend anyway because he felt guilty.


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Wish (kind of) that I could be normal, part three

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My sleep is shit. It’s always been shit, but there are ups and downs to it. Now, I’m in a down time, and I’m having such difficulty going to bed. In the past, I’ve had trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, and getting enough sleep (though not necessarily at the same time. Though also not NOT necessarily at the same time).

The only time I have not have problems with my sleep was in the hospital and about a year following after I returned home. I was heavily drugged, and it was so wonderful. I understood why people did drugs after that. I felt like a million bucks and nothing hurt. About three weeks after i returned home, I started feeling my body again. Little aches and pains, and I realized, “Oh, I acutally have to return to my body.” I was not happy about it, but there wasn’t anything I could do.

My point is that my sleep is on difficulty mode just like everyithing else in my life. It’s been my nemesis since I was a kid, and I haven’t made much progress in all the years since.

That’s not completely right. I have times when I make painful progress with my sleep, only to fall back into a terrible pattern once again. Then,  I berate myself for not getting to bed earlier. It’s six-thirty in the morning. I should be in bed. I am not, though, and I will probably not be for another half hour at least. More like an hour.

I try not to beat myself up because that doesn’t help. In fact, it hurts in that the shame makes me even less likely to go to bed at a decent time. Normally, I can make incremental changes, but I don’t feel capable of doing that right now. I’m not sure why, but I have a hunch it has something to do with the hopelessness I feel at the world around me.

When I got a tight eight hours a night after my medical crisis, I felt amazing. I could not believe how good it felt because I never get that much sleep a night unless I’m sick. Or if I hadn’t slept in a very long time. Otherwise, though, I am lucky if I get seven hours in aggregate. This is me reverting to the mean, and I’m not happy about it.


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Why am I like this? Part two

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Alternate title: Playing life on hard mode.

Yesterday, I wrote about how I unerringly pick the hardest choice when it comes to identity. And I tied it in with my dislike for hard games. Then I gushed a bit about Shadow of the Erdtree to make my point as to why I play From games (but, sadly, I probably won’t be able to play them for much longer).

Shadow of the Erdtree epitomizes what I love and hate about gaming. Or rather, the whole soulslike genre. I have tried so many soulslike games, and I have liked exactly one of them. That was Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios). And the reason I liked it was because it was almost exactly like a From game except in 2D. In fact the 2D aspect was my least-favorite part of the game beacuse it made rolling difficult. But they preserved the ability to beat the game with just magicks alone, which was why I enjoyed it so much.

Fast-forward to Life of Pi (Round8 Studio, now known as Nough, and NEOWIZ). Hahhahahah I just realized I called it Life of Pi. Lies of P, not Life of Pi. People not being me have declared it the best soulslike not done by From. Some have even said it could have been done by From themselves. I strongly disagree with that, by the way. The level design in severely lacking, and I don’t consider it good combat that only relies on one thing (fucking parrying. Goddamn it. I hope this trend goes awaya soon). It’s boring as fuck, and no, that’s not just my bitterness talking. Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole reason

Even within the FromSoft games, the ones I like better are the ones that allow you to play in a variety of ways. I have said time and time again that Sekiro is my least favorite of the From games, and it’s in a large part because you have to play the game the way the devs want you to play. Or rather, it’s no fun if you can’t/don’t.

People like to say this line, “When you click with the combat, it’s makes the game easy.” When I said the combat never clicked for me, I could see their brains screeching to a halt. I was talking to my nibling’s spouse about it, and they were talking about how a certain boss was a hard skill check. “That’s when the combat clicks–or you quit.” I told them that it never clicked for me, and I beat that particular boss the way I beat all the bosses–by whittling away at the health.” They said in all seriousness that they didn’t know you could beat the boss like that. I said, “You can, but it’s not fun.”

Which is true. I beat the game, but the second I beat the final boss and the very brief elation faded, all I felt was relief. I never, ever had to fight that boss again–and it was the best feeling in the world.

I watched a video from a guy who loved the From games, but who was very clear about there being a line between hard bosses that were fun and fair, and being difficult just for the sake of being difficult. He mentioned the last boss of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, who was a nightmare when the game first came out. It was not a fun fight at all, and I don’t know why I persisted*. But it was an awful boss. I was shocked at how bad it was. It felt like pure fan service, and not good fan service at that.

Now, to be fair, one of my biggest issues with the boss pre-nerf was that I could not actually see the boss with the light show going on in the second phase of the fight. See, every action was accompanied by a holy attack that had light trails errrrrrywhere (and I do mean everywhere). And there’s a specific attack that is nearly impossible to avoid if you don’t start sprinting in the opposite direction the second you see it’s going to happen. Even then, you can still get tag–and if you get hit by it fully, it can one-shot you.

I. Hate. Being. One. Shot. By. A. Boss.

It feels cheap and really discourages me from trying again. It idd not help that I got the boss down to about a tenth of their health bar on my second try–and then did not come closs again for hours. That’s how it goes, I know, with big From bosses, but it just cemented my hatred for the boss.

This boss was so bad, many people respecced just to beat this boss. Think about it. You’ve played the entire DLC with one build, and then you have to change it to a very specific build in order to beat the final boss of the DLC. I did not respec, but that’s becauuse I actually had (sort of) one of the builds best suited to beating this boss.

Here’s the connection. Kind of.

In real life, I often feel as if I’m playing on hard mode. I don’t choose it on purpose, but I don’t really have a choice. It’s not as if I said, “Hey, I want to make my life as hard as possible so I’m going to eschew not only binary genders, but nonbinary genders as well. I’m going to choose nightmare mode and go with agender.”

If I wanted to play on easy mode within the traits that were given to me from birth, I would be a cishet woman who got married and had two children. Working a nice job that didn’t take too much of my energy because I had to devote that to my man and my children. Pilates three times a week, maybe a little ladylike curling of 1-pound dumbbells (I use 15-pounders when I do my Taiji weight-bearing sets. Or 20-pounders for the easier of the movements.)

That would have been easier–along with being a Christian. Which I was born as. Let me clarify. It would have been easier in the sense of blending in with society and not making waves. And maybe I would have felt less like a freak/alien. Well, if I actually wanted those things, I mean. Because I don’t, it would have made me feel even lonelier if I tried to do all that just to fit in. When my mother went on a fifteen year campaign to get me pregnant, the only time I wavered was when she  wore me down to the point that I considered doing it just to shut her the fuck up. Which is not a good reason to have a child, honestly.

Fortunately, I came to my senses and did not give into my terrible impulse. It just goes to show, though, how much my mother bugged me to have children.

More tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

*I know why. I’m a glutton for punishment. And I’m stubborn AF. And I would feel like a failure if I didn’t beat the boss.

 

Wish I may, wish I might

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Alternate title: Playing life on hard mode.

I don’t like hard games. I know that sounds facetious because I play From games, but I play them despite the difficulty not because of it. I put up with the hard bosses because the level design is beyond compare.

I can’t get over how amazing the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s level design was. Elden Ring, the base game, was terrific as expected. It won game of the year and totally deserved it. Two years later, the DLC came out. I went through one of the most traumatic events of my life on the day it was announced (well, it started that day and the next day was actually the worst day of my life, but I was ready for it (mostly) when it came out four months later.

I gladly allowed my self to get lost in the moody, atmospheric DLC. I did what I always do, which is avoid the main story for as long as I possibly could.

Hey, wait. This post isn’t about that, so let’s move on. I have written about Shadow of the Erdtree endlessly, and I wasn’t going to do it again in this post. I just wanted to mention it because it’s simply amazing in the breadth and depth. The main game took me 240+ hours to complete whereas the DLC took me 70+ hours. I explored the hell out of everything in both the base game and the DLC.

I was just about to write more about it, but the point is that I don’t play the games for the difficulty. In fact, in the DLC, the last boss was just…ughhhhhh. They have nerfed the boss (or rather, the shitshow that surrounds the boss), but it’s still just an unpleasant fight.

In real life, I wish I did not unerringly pick the hardest hill to climb every time. I swear to god that I don’t do it on purpose, no matter what my mother thinks. (She doesn’t like that I’m so anti-tradition and so…weird and wrong (in her eyes).) It’s just what I feel in my heart of hearts.

In this case, it’s gender. I was reading a forum about changing your pronouns at work, and so many people were for it. Meaning they were for having them in  the sig box of their emails and introducing themselves with their pronouns. These were cis people, by the way. Most trans/nonbinary people were not as sanguine about it for a few reasons.

One, for people who aren’t out yet, being made to state their pronouns could be very fraught. Or the people who haven’t decided on their pronouns yet. Or, like me, someone who is agender and does not use gendered pronouns.

More than one person said how I felt–they did not mind so much other people calling them by a pronoun, but they did not want to actually call themselves by their at birth gender pronoun. I have given up mostly on correcting people because I really don’t have the energy. Plus, I get how weird it is not to use gendered pronouns, so I can’t really fault people for getting confused. I mean, I don’t always remember for myself, either.


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Groups, labels, and feeling at home, part two

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One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout my life is how much my sense of being an outsider is me and how much is them. Them meaning society. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how there’s a channel in the Discord to which I belong that is really good for discussing various topics. It got threateneed to be age-verified when Discord switched to that (not getting into the inane politics behind it, but just, ugh), and some people who never visited the channel thought that was just fine.

Here’s the thing. It’s the one channel I felt comfortable talking about queer things, nonmonogamy, and an array of other things that did not fit into the other channels. In fact, the channel was created (before my time) when there wasa a college student (19 or 20, I think) asking questions about sexual slang. I gather this was in one of the general channels, and some people were uncomfortable with it.

Then, one of the owners of the Discord created the channel for After Dark topics and said, “Don’t make me regret this.”

We got that lifted when the threat of intrusive age-verification became a reality, for which I am profoundly grateful. In this channel, we have talked about music, dating, lightly touched on politics, and, yes, sex. We’ve talked about nonmonogamy/polyamory (and what the difference is), whether men and women can truly be friends (and introducing nonbinary/agender people into the question), and have encouraged people to go on dates.

The last few days the channel has been super-busy. No idea why, but the messages have been flying. We’ve pondered what ‘milkshake’ means in the classic R&B song of the same name by Kelis. Boobs? Butt? Blowjobs? Je ne sais quois? I’ve always thought it was the first, but I’ve heard people say it’s the second. Never heard the third or fourth until today. Other people said it’s what she has within–pretty much the same as the fourth.

How did we get on this topic? Because it’s been stuck in my head for several days, and I shared that in the channel. I think it was tangentially related to something that was going on in the channel–though I’m not absolutely sure. My brain works in werd ways (which is the whole point of the last ten or so posts), so who knows what connection it made?

Side note: when I was  younger, I would write or talk in ways that just assumed others could see the connections I was maknig in my brain. They were so clear to me, I couldn’t understand why they weren’t as clear to other people.

We also talked about dating woes people have had and muffins. Those are not related topics, byway. Oh, and it was muffins and cupcakes. We were discussing the difference between them because someone shared a meme about them. It had something to do with what the actual difference was–was it just the frosting? And then we migrated to talking about did that mean muffins were tops and cupcakes were bottoms? Because muffin tops were a thing.


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Sex and dating, dating and sex, part eight

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I’ve decided that I want to do ten posts about this topic, so three to go. Why? Because. This is one way my neurodivergent brain works, by the way. It insists on making patterns when there aren’t any. I know that’s normal to some extent with everyone, but my brain does it to a bothersome degree. I know it’s going to happen at some point, but I’m powerless to stop it. It’s easier to go with it and let it wear itself out–or not. Some of my obsessions continue whereas others are left in the dust.

One thing I’m working on is being not ashamed about the weird way my brain works. Look. I know I’m a freak. I’ve known it since I was a kid, even if I could not articulate it. It’s interesting. There is someone in the Discord I’m in who is clearly neurodivergent and not at all interested in masking. Yes, it’s a ‘he’, which is significant. He has upset/offended several people in the Discord, including me because of the way he’s phrased things.

He likes to state his opinion as if it’s fact, and many of them are inflammatory. I’m not against it, but I also think that you should have some care as to the feelings of other people. It’s hard for me to say because I’m too much to the other side. As an AFAB, I was taught to always care about other people’s feelings first. That’s not good, either, but I do think there needs to be a balance.

It’s frustrating because this person, let’s call him Jack, makes me want to defend him on some occasions, not because I necessarily agree with his viewpoint, but because I don’t like groupthink. All groups have it, and this is not the worst at it, by far, but there is a slight stifling that goes on that I do not approve of.

There are times when I eye a conversation and decide not to wade into it. Sometimes, it’s because I’m not up for an argument, and sometimes, it’s because I know that my opinion is so out there, it’s not going to be welcomed. Therefore, I’m self-censoring, which is not ideal. It’s what I do much of the time, though.

I do envy Jack for not giving a shit about how he says things, but I also think he needs to think a bit. He tries to defend himself by saying it’s how he and his friends talk. Well, we’re not his friends. Also, that’s a bad excuse for being a jackhole. Even if it’s not deliberate, it’s still off-putting.

I don’t know where I draw the line between being yourself and being a jerk, but he goes well past that line. Also, again, it’s dudes who are allowed to be their authentic selves while women and AFAB people are more penalized for not fitting in.

In Jack’s case, it’s also because he’s mostly online and on the younger side. And he hangs out with people just like him (I’m guessing the predominance of them are guys, too). It’s easy to think if everyone around you thinks the way you do, everyone in general does as well.

People have been very impatient and brusque with him. Neurotypicals, I mean. Or more specificially, people who are not autistic (since autism and ADHD are different things). I can often see what Jack is trying to say, but do I want to defend him? Sometimes. Othertimes, he makes me angry, too. Especially when he talks as if he’s the authority on America (he’s not from this country and doesn’t live in it).


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Dating, sex, and tech, part seven

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Apparently, I have more to say about dating, sex, and tech. Techs in the city? Text in the city? Oh, wait. It’s Sex AND the City. Whatever. I never watched the showl/movie?/whatever, anyway. This is my post from yesterday in which I talk about what I thought was going to happen in my life versus what I really wanted to happen in my life.

Today, I had my Taiji Zoom class. It’s in the basement of a church that is like a concrete bunker. My teacher uses a headset so we online can hear her. Without fail, at some point, the connection goes out. We may be able to see her, but we can’t hear her. Or vice-versa. This is usually when she switches from using her headset to not using it, which she does after ne do meditation. She takes off the headset during meditation, which makes sense. For whatever reason, when plugging the headset back in, it totally disconnects her from the internet.

Sometimes, it’s because she accidentally hits a button on her headset. Other times, who knows? Tech is going to tech.

I will say on my end, I had a few months of frustration with my audio when attending the Zoom classes. It was after a Zoom update, of course. I fucking hate updates because for every positive update, there’s two to three unintended negative consequences. Also, I really don’t need updates every month. Maybe keep it to once a quarter.

Of course I want my computer to run as smoothly as possible, but I hate it when the negatives outweighs the positives. And it’s often the case of , “How the fuck do I return this to the way it was? Fuck if I know!”

By the way, I’m playing a game called, Birdigo, by John August and Corey Martin. They say it’s inspired by Wordle and Balatro; it’s simple and addictive. However, it would not accept the word ‘fuck’, which made me lift an eyebrow. Really? ‘Fuck’ isn’t in the dictionary? I was very disappointed by that.

Anyway, back to my computer issues. Suddenly, after a Zoom update, my audio did not work in Zoom. It worked just fine the week before. I fiddled with my settings, and they said that they could hear me, but I was extremely quiet.

The next week, I realized that I was somehow had two Zooms open. One was the app and one was the in-browser Normally, I used the in-browser, but it didn’t automatically come up like it used to. Now, it was the app that came up, but I didn’t use the app. Therefore, there was no audio through the app. The audio would only come through the browser.

This took two sessions to figure out. I checked it after class, and it was correct. I had no idea why the app was opening since I did not use the app and did not want to use the app. I only used the browser, but Zoom didn’t like that. It wanted me to use the app, probably so it could get my details.


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