kill the idea

so harry styles, one of the members of one direction, came out with his first ever solo photoshoot today. harry has never presented in the most traditionally masculine way, and has often been praised for having long hair and not being hypermasculine and for wearing glittery shoes, things like that. but some of the photos in this shoot present him as androgynous in that particular way that artists shoot for when they have attractive cis white models. anyway now people are like HARRY !! KING OF GENDER!!! and i for one want to die! so here's my tirade about it!! 

kill the idea that cis people should be praised for “paving the way” for trans/nonbinary people by “queering gender.“ almost every cis person ive seen on tumblr since harry's solo magazine shoot came out has been praising him for being androgynous and breaking gender stereotypes. operating on the assumption that he is cis, which he very well may not be, but he has verbally self-identified as a man many times over the years, so i'm assuming he’s cis–as a cis white man, his gender expression does little to nothing for trans ppl. i still get harassed on the street by strangers and wont go into gendered public bathrooms out of fear and get misgendered bc of the way i express my gender. i get harassed and misgendered when i express my more masc aligned gender in feminine coded ways. harry gets praise. this is not "liberation”–it’s literally nothing. like harry can express his gender in any way that feels authentic to him, that’s not the problem. gender is performative for all of us. the problem is that ppl think that his gender expression is groundbreaking. regardless of that idea completely ignoring history and many poc who came before him who did similar things or even more (first thought was prince), there is nothing radical about a cis man with long hair in chelsea boots. that will never be more radical than the mere existence of trans ppl. we do this shit every day to survive and be ourselves and we get disrespected, abused, and killed. harry styles gets praised. THAT is the difference. there is NOTHING radical or subversive about a cis white man getting credit for shit trans ppl do every fucking day. in fact, i can barely think of anything that conforms more to our society’s hegemonic structure. i love harry very very much, but it is an ENORMOUS privilege that he can perform his gender authentically and not face violence for it.

i'm back :))

so the last time i used this blog was almost 2 years ago.... yikes !!! i used to write on this blog every day, so it’s very weird to be back ... and it’s doubly weird because i’m coming back with a different name and entirely different identity. i’m revamping this blog as lou, and it turns out i'm not a girl lol so. there's that..... i'm a trans masculine nonbinary person, and i use he/him pronouns!!

i could've easily started an entirely new blog but this one is my baby (i started it when i was 13!!!! aaaAAAAHH)!!! y'all are welcome to like... look at my old shit on here but i probably said some Not Great stuff but keep in mind i was like 13-16 and uneducated on loooots of stuff so don't like tear me to shreds or anything pls !!!!

i mostly decided to revamp this blog because i have A Lot to say about. lots of things and i want a place to say it in a more organized manner than i do on my tumblr. this was originally a fashion blog and i still want to talk about that tbh, but in a different way than i did before. fashion isn't necessarily high fashion/runway fashion. i actually have little to no interest in that shit anymore. it's just skinny white people wearing expensive clothing that's ugly a lot of the time and i Do Not Care!! but: for the past 2 years i had Awful body dysphoria and mostly just wore baggy clothing all the time to the point where if i told people that i used to be a fashion blogger they're like . lmao are u sure sweatie ?? which is very Yikes. but i had top surgery a little under 3 months ago, and have been on testosterone for around 1 year and 3 months (!!!!). so basically there's 2 things at play here:

1) my body is extremely different than what it was before
2) the way others perceive my gender is often directly correlated to how i dress

the second one was /never/ the case before. in a post-op, on-T body, i'm learning to navigate what this means for me and how i can be authentic to myself and my identity as best as i can!! which is actually really fuckin hard. but i process things by yelling about them so that's why the blog is back lol :)

i also just miss writing a lot? i used to write on this thing every day (tbt to the manic episode of 2012 .... y i k e s) and i was just writing really often and now i barely do? and it's a really important thing for me and my ~healing~ and that's my #1 thing. i still write fiction sometimes but . and don't grill me for this but. it's mostly fanfiction ... IT IS A GOOD AND IMPORTANT GENRE OF FICTION OKAY!!!!! maybe i will post some of mine or link to it .. i don't write anything that's nsfw!!!! because i'm ace and i don't do that shit!!

as for what i'm actually going to be writing about... i'm really only interested in fashion in a peripheral sense anymore so i'll talk about it sometimes, but this is definitely Not a fashion blog anymore.  but i wanna talk about intersectional feminism n shit!! i work at an intersectional feminist bookstore and am also on tumblr all the time so that's like. most of what i think about (except one direction and Gay Things). this is basically going to be a more refined version of my tumblr without the fear of my posts being hijacked by people trying to drag me into The Discourse(tm). i want to have conversations with people but also? this is my place for queer screaming and if u wanna scream... make ur own blog it costs $0.00 :)

also: i changed the title to something that represents me pretty well: i'm queer and i'm always screaming. that's really it. also my old blog title was a fucking awful pun ... who the fuck allowed me to use so many puns like literally @god why did you let me do that ???? W H Y

ok i'm excited to start posting again!!!!!!!!!! weee see y'all soon